A California Yankee

In memoriam

2026-06-08T03:14:18.170+12:00

Seriously, one of the few highlights since my wife died was buying ten juvenile discus in Auckland last Christmas. Watching them grow over the past six months has been a delight. What hasn't been a delight is the algae in the tank. I never had an issue with my previous tank - in the same location - so I struggled to understand what was going wrong.

Last month I bought a CO2 setup on the premise that if the regular plants grew faster, they would deprive the algae of nutrients. Sadly, it didn't help--the plants grew faster but the algae grew even faster.

I do a weekly water change (which, if I'm honest, isn't often enough for discus) and scrape off the algae. This weekend was going to be very busy -- I was going to be away, running from one task to the next -- so I wanted to do the water change before I left. That went fine but I also decided to lower the light levels to see if that would help with the algae, and while I was fiddling with the light timers I saw the CO2 wasn't flowing.

The CO2 valve has a "bubble counter" so you can visually see the rate of the CO2. Normally it's 2-3 bubbles per second, but when I looked I didn't see any, so I opened up the valve. That's when I realised the problem was there was no water in the bubble counter, so the CO2 was flowing but I couldn't see it. What I should have done was turn off the valve, add some water and adjust the CO2 back to 2-3 bubbles. However, I was already running late so I guessed at the rate and left.

That evening my flatmate sent me a photo of the discus lying on their sides, breathing but not otherwise moving. At first I thought maybe I didn't use enough water conditioner so I asked my son to add some. I googled some discus discussion groups but couldn't find anything relevant that would explain the fish being on their sides.

In the morning there was no improvement, so I tried to rearrange my day so I could come home between tasks, but it just wasn't going to work. It was about that time that it finally hit me that the problem was likely the CO2. For reasons someone else will have to explain, an excess of CO2 causes the pH to drop. It basically acidifies the water! I asked my son to shut off the CO2, which he did, but obviously that was about 18 hours late.

When I finally got home Sunday at 9pm, the first thing I did was pull out all the plants so I could see the fish. Five of the discus were already dead. The other five I put in my quarantine tank, along with 4 Sterbai catfish and 2 upside-down cats. I tried to increase the pH of the quarantine tank but I misjudged and went too high.

Meanwhile I did a big water change on the main tank, cleaned it up and replanted it. The pH was normal (about 6.5) but the water wasn't quite hot enough. I started putting the tank water in the quarantine tank and suddenly three of the discus perked up. Unfortunately, the other two discus had died.

At 2am I reintroduced the fish back into the main tank. The catfish seemed ok and two of the discus were upright, with the third one still struggling. I turned out the lights and hoped for the best.

To say I'm gutted would be an understatement. I know they aren't cats or dogs, but a fishkeeper is responsible for every aspect of the fish's life. After all, they did not evolve to live in such an unnatural habitat. So losing them doesn't feel like losing a pet, it feels like you murdered you me pet. Or in this case, seven of them.

I'll bury them in the morning.

I hate America

2026-05-11T08:11:13.780+12:00

I know this may be considered traitorous by certain thin-skinned politicians, but I hate visiting the US. (And it's only day 3 of a 2week holiday...)

It was a 12-hour flight from New Zealand, which is about 6500 miles. (Even having to convert back to the Imperial system annoys me--I remember the US made an effort to convert to metric when I was a kid and no doubt the politicians at the time would have called this "woke" and insisted it was un-American to stop using the British system...)

It then took me nearly 6 hours to cover the last 70 miles! It took over two hours just to get out of the airport! The queue at the car rental was huge, there were only four people working and they spent most of their time trying to upsell customers. Instead of recognizing their were 30 people waiting and just trying to process everyone as quickly as possible, they ran through the 20-question script with each customer like they had all the time in the world. "Do you want to upgrade your insurance?" No. "Do you want to upgrade the car you specifically requested?" No. "Do you want to prepay fuel at an even more exorbitant price than the local stations?" No. "Do you want to prepay your tolls?" How much? "$59.99 per day." What?? I'd have to cross the Bay bridge four times a day for that to make sense!

Finally got on the motorway only to come to a complete stop almost immediately. Satnav said it would be 2.5 hours to go the 70 miles. That's less than 30 mph/50kmh. The famous US 8-lane freeways move slower than the back roads at home!

And the drivers -- I know you shouldn't diagnose mental health by observation alone, but these drivers were sociopathic. I mean, no empathy whatsoever. If they thought a different lane was going faster, they pulled into it without hesitation, without looking at other traffic, without signalling. And of course, as soon as all those cars pulled into the faster lane, that lane came to a standstill and they immediately switched back. Undertaking is not only encouraged here, it is it's own art form, and you better believe that if a lane is ending every car will drive at full speed until they have literally nowhere to go, then pull in front of you.

And the saddest part is, I used to drive just like this! Growing up in Los Angeles, there was no other option. When I first moved to the UK and my girlfriend asked why I never signalled, I told her that in LA, when you signalled other cars would immediately move to cut you off, so you learned to only signal at the last second. It took me years to undo two decades of driving in LA, and now returning to it I am absolutely horrified.

I can't find comparable statistics for car accidents but in 2021, the US had 14.2 traffic fatalities per 100,00 people. In 2022, New Zealand had 7.3 road deaths per 100,000 people. The real difference is that New Zealand thinks this is way too high and has been working hard to reduce the total number of deaths:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

https://www.transport.govt.nz/statistics-and-insights/safety-annual-statistics

Thankfully I arrived at the hotel safely and got in line behind someone complaining the water wasn't hot enough. (It wasn't.) I checked into my room and unwrapped a cup to make tea, unwrapped another cup to get water, unwrapped the hand soap and unwrapped a spoon. And of course this was just the plastic on the single-user items that also went in the trash five minutes later!

In the morning I went down to take advantage of the breakfast buffet. That's when I remembered that what the rest of the world considers dessert, the US considers breakfast: Almost all carbs and sugar. I was in heaven, until I realised the cinnamon raisin bagel I had just shmeared was actually blueberry. That is a crime against humanity.

I then went to synagogue. I'd been to this little synagogue many times over the years and was always surprised by their total lack of security. Since my last visit, however, they'd installed a massive gate and, weirdly, had not installed any sort of bell or intercom. If you didn't know the gate code, you weren't getting in. On top of that, there was a local sheriff sitting in an SUV inside the gate, though it's hard to be sure because the windscreen was tinted which, of course, is illegal, but who's going to ticket them? Anyway, if he was sitting in the car, he saw me standing helplessly at the gate and completely ignored me. Thankfully, someone else arrived and let me in.

My brother was looking to buy a used EV and wanted to show me two options: One had a "branded title" which, I discovered, was a fancy way of saying the car had been written off by the insurance company and yet was somehow still allowed to be sold. The other had some damage from an accident. (This is why they were in his budget.) But first he had to return his rental car, which is when I discovered this little trek was going to take 3 hours!! And he didn't think this was unusual! I balk at driving to Palmerston North, which is less than 100 miles!

We got to Tracy, I expressed my reservation about the branded title, they wouldn't budge on the $9,200 price tag, so we got back in my car and, just as we were about to drive off, the salesperson rushed over and agreed to $8,000.

My brother signed more paperwork than I've ever seen in my life. One of the forms was for new plates -- in some States, plates stay with the owner, but in California plates always stayed with the car, so I was confused. It turns out that, because it took 45 days for the DMV to transfer ownership, during that period all of the bridge tolls were applied to the previous owner, and rather than try to fix that system they just decided to take away the license plates.

In New Zealand, we would have just done a straight bank transfer and be done in 30 seconds, but the American bank system is about 20 years behind the rest of the world. (But don't tell Americans that; they don't know anything about the rest of the world and so assume there systems are the best.) So the only options were a debit card, which attracted a 3.5% fee, and a Zelle transfer, except it has a daily transfer limit that you can't override. Between me, my brother and my sister (who wasn't even there!) we figured we could complete the Zelle transfer and avoid the 3.5% fee.

My sister's transfer went through fine; mine seemed to go through fine but then I got an email that said they were going to hold it for 3 days with no explanation; and my brother was told he had to call his bank to verify his identity before the transfer could be made, and when he called the number they gave him, they said it was a different department, and they were only open Mon-Fri. This was a Saturday. Even better, Zelle took the money out of my account immediately so even if I decided to switch to the debit card, I no longer had the money.

Needless to say, we couldn't take the car home, so in a few days - when the bank decides to let us transfer our funds - we'll have to make the 2-hour round-trip to Tracy to pick up the car. With the price of petrol in the States, that 3.5% fee is looking good...

P.S. The debit card option was never really an option because I use my sister's address for my US bank account, and the bank had sent a new debit card to my sister. For some reason she decided to open the envelope and put the debit card in a "safe place." When I arrived, she gave me the envelope the debit card came in, but she has no idea where the debit card is. 🙄

Drash on parashat Emor

2026-05-02T22:28:44.309+12:00

Emor translates to “say” and the first line of the parashat is:

Vayomer Adonai el-Moshe

emor el-hakohanim b’ney Aharon

v'amarta aleihem:

L'nefesh lo-yitama b'amav.

God said to Moses:

Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron

and say to them:

None shall defile himself for any [dead] person among his kin

Nefesh first appears in Genesis 1:20: haMayim sheretz nefesh chayah, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures.” Nefesh is translated as “soul” and chayah means “living.”

This same phrase is used in Genesis 2:7 when God breathes life into Adam.

In Emor, nefesh is used without chayah to mean "dead soul” or “dead person." The next word, yitama, means to become defiled. To defile something is to desecrate something sacred. In Jewish law, this is a spiritual state, not a physical one. Tum'ah is to be in a state of ritual impurity which restricts a person from holy activities, such as entering the Temple or consuming holy food. The rituals that return a person to purity, taharah, differ based on the source of tum’ah.

This first line of Emor is a negative mitzvah, the prohibition against Kohanim coming into contact with a dead body (with the exception for close family members). However, Leviticus 5:2 has established other ways that people become impure and, in Numbers 19 (Parasha Chukat), we learn that anyone who comes into contact with a dead body, or is in the same tent, or touches a human bone or a grave, becomes impure for seven days. Chukat also gives us instructions for purification: The law of the Red Heifer, one of the strangest stories in the Torah.

Briefly, a red cow without blemish that has never been worked is slaughtered by the High Priest; its blood is sprinkled seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting; its hide, flesh blood and dung are burned along with cedar wood, hyssop, and “crimson stuff”. The priest then becomes impure so another person must gather the ashes and deposit them outside the camp. That person also becomes impure.

A priest mixes some of the ashes with fresh water to create the water of lustration, which is sprinkled on the impure person on the third day and the seventh day. The person must then wash their clothes and bathe in a mikveh, and they become pure in the evening.

This decree defies rational explanation and is considered beyond human understanding, but then it makes a dire warning: “Whoever touches a corpse and does not undergo cleansing, defiles God’s Tabernacle; that person shall be cut off from Israel.”

Other sources of tum’ah, in ascending order of severity, include:

Semen Emission
Childbirth (Yoledet): (7 days for a son, 14 days for a daughter)
Menstruation (Niddah)
Discharges (Zav/Zavah) other than semen and menstrual blood
Skin Disease (Tzaraath)
The Eight Creeping Animals: After Leviticus 11 defines what animals may be eaten, it then randomly lists eight animals whose corpses cannot be touched, including moles, mice, lizards, geckos, crocodiles, and chameleons.

Corpse contamination (tumat met) is considered the highest level of ritual impurity and is called avi avot hatumah (literally "grandfather of impurity"). The Mishnah describes several grades of tumat met: The corpse itself is the most severe; followed by anyone who touches the corpse; and then if that person touches anyone else, or food and drink, while they are still impure.

It would be very easy to dismiss this as public health dressed as religion: Corpses have diseases so requiring people to isolate and wash after contact with a corpse just makes sense, right? As far back as the 18th century BCE people were aware of contagion. The etymology of the word tum’ah is obscure but it reflects the idea that a defiling substance can be transferred from one person or thing to another, even if it is not visible.

But if this is for pragmatic reasons, why is the ritual so enigmatic? God repeatedly tells us, “You shall be holy for I am holy.” In Judaism, "holy" (kadosh) means “set apart” and ritual items have strict rules for their use. When we light the shabbat candles, we do not use them for light or warmth; when we wear tallit, blow the shofar or read the siddur, these are all treated with reverence. Similarly, for the Israelites to be set apart, to become holy, we also must have rules for how to live, as well as a way to return to a state of holiness.

In Jewish tradition, a human corpse is viewed as profoundly sacred—often compared to an "impaired Torah scroll"—retaining holiness even after death. The dead body creates the highest form of ritual impurity precisely because it requires special purification rites. And for those handling the body, death reminds us of our own mortality, it takes us out of the life-affirming nature of holiness, which in turn requires extreme steps for us to return. Tum’ah literally forces us to choose between life and death, and warns us that if we don’t make the effort to return to life, we are cutting ourselves off from God.

N.B. In copying this, all of the footnotes were stripped out, so apologies for not referencing my sources.

Uber

2026-04-30T18:26:21.923+12:00

I'm no longer working on Wednesdays so I thought maybe I'd do some Uber driving for pocket money, as well as to give me some structure and meet other people. I didn't expect it to be a get-rich-quick scheme but they say if you just work the rush hour you can make decent money, and I figured driving about 3 hours a week was reasonable. My car is also pretty banged up so I figured I could use some of the income to replace the bumper and fix the scratches.

I looked at the website for Uber drivers and it said:

It’s easy to sign up to drive using the Uber app. Here’s what you need:

Be at least 20 years of age
Have held a valid full NZ driver licence for at least 1 year
Have access to a vehicle that meets Uber's vehicle requirements
Be listed as an insured driver for the vehicle you will drive
Have a Passenger Endorsement card
Valid vehicle registration
Certificate of Fitness

The vehicle requirements said "must be a 4-door, 15-years-old or newer model with working air conditioning and 5+ seats." (My car is a 2014 Prius so I'm good until 2029!)

I thought I had all of those except the Passenger endorsement so I looked into that. Hilariously, they refer to a "small p" endorsement for taxi drivers and a "big P" endorsement for bus drivers. A "small p" endorsement costs NZ $224 for one year or $262 for five years* and you need:

A full NZ car licence for at least 2 years**
A medical certificate
Pass a background check

I happened to have a GP appointment so I asked him for the medical certificate. I thought it was just a letter that said I didn't have epilepsy but it turned out to be a four-page form where he had to test my eyesight, go over all my medications, etc. Thankfully, even though the appointment ran over, he didn't charge extra. (That said, I made the appointment so I could get a 12-month prescription but while doing the medical certificate we both forgot and he gave me the standard 3-month prescription, so I'll have to see him again in 3 months...)

It said the background check is handled as part of the application, but the fine print said, "if you’ve lived in any one country (apart from New Zealand) for 12 months since the age of 14 you will need to provide to the NZTA a criminal history check for each country you have lived in." For the US, you submit an online application to the FBI and it costs US $18. For the UK, if you're in the UK it is £21.50 but if you're overseas it's.£70 (US $94)! I actually got a UK background check for my NZ citizenship application, but that was a while ago and I no longer have a copy.

OK, this is already starting to get expensive but I thought, when I apply, they'll know I'm American (from the accent) but not that I lived in the UK, so if I just provide the US background check I'm sure it will be fine. So I started to apply only to find I needed to submit my fingerprints in a very specific way, and basically the only place I could get that done was in the US.

But it just so happens I'm going to the States in a week! The website said I could get it done at a US Post Office but I decided to double-check: I'm staying in Vacaville but that post office doesn't do fingerprints. The closest post office that does it is in Fairfield, but only between 9am-2pm weekdays and 10am-11am on Saturday. (1 hour, I am not making that up.) Oh, and they charge US $50.

OK, so now I'm looking at $262 for the P endorsement and NZ $117 for the US background check. But it gets much worse.

Then I learned the Certificate of Fitness (CoF) above is different than the Warrant of Fitness (WoF) I have. The CoF is more stringent*** and can result in penalties! (ie. If you bring your car in for a WoF and the tread depth is below minimum, you fail. If you bring your car in for a CoF and the tread depth is below minimum, you fail and you may have to pay a fine!) You also need to file a "change of use" form, but it's unclear if there's a fee for that. I have no idea what the cost is for the CoF because not all inspection stations do this and those that do all say "call us" but AI says it's at least $175. (And it used to be every six months but they just changed it to be annually.)

So now we're at least $550 in the hole here. Then I checked with my car insurance and they replied: “Your policy does not cover any loss, damage, or liability arising from...carrying fare-paying passengers." I checked another insurer and they wanted $202 per month for commercial insurance. AI said the minimum I could expect is about $140 per month. It doesn't matter if you use it for 3 hours a week or 60 hours a week, the price is the same.

Then the final kicker: In the Uber fine print it says the vehicle "Must be in excellent working condition, with no cosmetic damage." So now I have to pay for the damage upfront! I don't have a quote but I can't imagine it being under $1,000. So now I'm in this for at least $4,000 before I've earned $1!

I then asked AI how much I might earn driving for uber for 3 hours per week and it said "approximately $60 to $100 before expenses." Let's assume I earn $100, spend $20 in gas and paid $15 in tax. After insurance ($140/month) and CoF ($175/year) I'd net $1,525/year, enough to pay off the $1,379 in fees and repairs and still pocket $146. That works out to less than $1 per hour.

And lastly, although I don't think there are any fees, it also says you have to complete driver safety education, purchase a child lock safety sticker, display a Small Passenger Service Licence Label in the windscreen a display a Transport Service Licence in the car. (You have to send a passport-style photo to Uber who then send you the latter.)

So I think this particular dream is dead. I know someone who does woodworking in his spare time and sells cutting boards at local markets on the weekend, so maybe I'll look into that...

* Hard to imagine who would select the one year option to save $38, but the "big P" endorsement -- for large vehicles -- is the same price whether you want it for one year or five years! (And it's actually cheaper than the "small P" endorsement!)
** Yes, Uber says you only need a NZ license for one year and then says you must have an endorsement that requires you to have a license for two years...
*** As an example, if you have a hatchback vehicle then you may need to have a means to secure cargo so it doesn't hit passengers in an accident.

Life stages through the lens of relationships

2026-04-17T23:35:12.283+12:00

My life stages have all coincided with different relationships. That was never the intent - I would have been very happy to have one relationship in this life - but it makes me wonder if this was all coincidental or if there was a causal relationship (and if the latter, was the relationship the cause or effect?)

In my teens, my best friend was a woman in her 50s. I know that sounds weird, but it wasn't. I had no interest in being a teenager -- I wanted to skip that phase and was desperate to grow up and be taken seriously, so for me this felt quite natural. However, the very thing that enabled that relationship is also what doomed it -- by the time I was 17, I had outgrown her and was ready to move on.

When I was 18, I moved in with a woman in her 30s. I adored her but I still had to deal with the actual transition to adulthood. I thought I could take a shortcut and skip university but I wanted a job in IT, and so I ended up working full-time and going to school part-time, which left very little time for a relationship.

For her part, she was not happy falling in love with someone so young, and I think that doomed the relationship from the start. I don't honestly know if I could have done anything to keep the relationship through that transition.

My next relationship started when I was 21, just as I was finishing school and settling into my career. Those were the salad days: Neither of us wanted kids, both of us were working, and I was no longer trying to grow up or be someone else. Those days passed in a blur of sunshine, friends and distractions. When we decided to move to rural Pennsylvania and open a B&B, I really thought our relationship was strong enough to survive that transition (otherwise I wouldn't have committed all of our savings) but I was wrong, and I walked away with practically nothing.

I felt like I was starting over so I decided to make it even harder by moving to another country. A relationship was the last thing on my mind, which is probably why I had my guard down and immediately fell in love. I was 38 and she was 35 and suddenly we were talking about having kids. I'd never wanted kids until I met her, and suddenly it was all I wanted. It was her desire to raise the kids Jewish that started me on the journey to convert to Judaism. That relationship was all about opening myself up, navigating a new culture and embracing change, but in the end she didn't really want a relationship with me. (If you thought I'd learned my lesson about protecting myself financially, you'd be wrong, and I walked away from this relationship with practically nothing, as well.)

Then at 44 I moved to New Zealand and was suddenly raising three kids. (My "pop-up family" as my wife used to say.) So that relationship was all about learning to be a father. My wife passed away and the kids are all now in their 20s, but they're still my pop-up family. Hopefully they will teach me about being a grandfather.

I'm sure there will be relationships in my future - I seem to fall into them - but I have no idea what they look like, or what I'll take away from them. What I can say is the adage, "the only common denominator in your dysfunctional relationships is you."

Parashat Tzav

2026-04-05T02:42:00.005+13:00

[Drasha delivered 28 March 2026]

In today’s portion, we are warned of the consequences for eating fat or blood:

7:25 If anyone eats the fat of animals from which offerings by fire may be made to GOD, the person who eats it shall be cut off from kin
7:27 Anyone who eats blood shall be cut off from kin.

The first question is, what’s wrong with fat? Rambam¹ differentiates chelev (suet) which surrounds the organs and can be separated from the meat, and shuman (marbling) which cannot. Only chelev is forbidden. As usual, the Torah provides no explanation or justification, but various theories have been put forward, the primary one is that fat was considered the "choicest part" of the animal and therefore belonged to God. How do we know fat was the choicest part? Because in Genesis², when Pharaoh tells Joseph to bring his family to Egypt he uses the phrase “chelev ha'aֽretz.” meaning the best part of the land.

The prohibition against consuming blood is mentioned seven times³ in the Torah. At the time of Creation, humans were only allowed to eat plant life, not creatures with souls. Only after the Flood did G‑d permit the consumption of meat, admonishing Noah: “Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat… You must not, however, eat flesh with its life-blood in it.”

Rashi⁴ said that because blood represents the nefesh (soul or life-force) and that blood is placed on the altar to atone for the human soul, then blood is too sacred to be consumed as food. Rambam⁵ said that consuming blood could coarsen the human soul, making a person more cruel and less spiritually sensitive. Maimonides⁶ said the prohibition was partly to distance Jews from the idolatrous practices of surrounding nations who believed drinking blood would grant supernatural powers. (If that sounds crazy, please ask your Christian friends about Holy Communion.)

So how do you remove all blood from meat? The scientific answer is: Meat doesn’t contain blood – blood is contained in veins and arteries, and the shechita is designed to drain the blood before it is butchered. The red in meat comes from the protein myoglobin, which is different than hemoglobin in blood, but both bind to oxygen giving it the same red colour. That said, the “kosher” method of removing blood is to roast the meat over an open flame or soak it, salt it and rinse it. Liver must be roasted then soaked three times. Kidneys are also problematic but kosher butchers usually get around this by selling the hindquarters, including the kidneys, to non-kosher butchers.

As for the punishment, the term Kareth is translated as “cut off from kin” but it has been variously defined as dying young, dying without children, being denied a portion in the world to come or straight up being murdered. There are thirty-six⁷ laws whose punishment is Kareth including: eating chametz during Pesach, certain sexual violations, ritual impurities, a man's refusal to be circumcised or anyone who sins deliberately.

These are just two references in Torah which ties Judaism to food and from which we derive the laws of kashrut, meaning “fit [for consumption].” Others include:

In Genesis⁸, after Jacob struggled with the angel: “Therefore, the children of Israel may not eat the displaced tendon, which is on the socket of the hip.” This is the sciatic nerve, or Gid Hanasheh, and it is why kosher butchers sell the hindquarters rather than try to remove this.
In Exodus⁹: “You shall be holy people to Me: you must not eat flesh torn by beasts in the field; you shall cast it to the dogs.” The word the Torah uses for "torn by beasts," t'reifah, is the origin of the Yiddish word, t'reif. This is also why the food you feed your pet does not have to be kosher (but you still can’t give your pet chametz during Pesach).
Also twice in Exodus¹⁰: “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.“ More on this in a minute.
The next portion, Shemini, goes into details about what animals can and can’t be eaten.

In November 1885¹¹, a group of Reform rabbis met in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and explicitly called for a rejection of laws which have a ritual, rather than moral, basis. For kashrut, they wrote, “We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.” They rejected the notion that food laws were divine commands or necessary for ritual purity and viewed them as a barrier to social integration with non-Jewish society.

Today, many progressive Jews have chosen to reinterpret, rather than reject, kashrut based on ethics, sustainability, and personal spiritual meaning. This is often tied to Tikkun Olam, or repairing the world.¹² This may include eating vegetarian, not buying battery laid eggs, focusing on sustainable food sources, or considering the animal and/or labor conditions of food producers.

This is not new. The twelfth-century commentator Rashbam¹³ (Rabbi Samuel ben Meir), believed the injunction against boiling a kid in its mother’s milk was not about mixing meat and dairy but instead was intended to teach tzaar baalei chayim, sensitivity to the pain of animals. As he wrote: "It is disgraceful and voracious and gluttonous to consume the mother's milk together with its young…. The Torah gave this commandment in order to teach you how to behave in a civilized manner."

One of the key tenets of Progressive Judaism is to find what is spiritually meaningful to you, and Torah recognises that what you consume – and its cost to the planet – must surely be one of the most important spiritual choices you can make. Rabbi Simeon Maslin¹⁴, past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, wrote, “I view our family dining table as a mizbei-ach m'at, a miniature altar…it is a sacred space which connects us to God and to the history of our people.”

Food for thought. Shabbat shalom and chag Pesach sameach.

https://www.sefaria.org/Ramban_on_Leviticus.3.9.1.↩

Genesis 45:18↩

Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 3:17, Leviticus 7:26, Leviticus 17:12, Deuteronomy 12:16, Deuteronomy 12:23, Deuteronomy 15:23↩

Rashi, Leviticus 17:11.↩

Nahmanides, Commentary to Leviticus 17:13.↩

Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, III:46↩

https://www.sefaria.org/Keritot.2a.1↩

Genesis 32:33↩

Exodus 22:30↩

Exodus 23:19↩

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Platform↩

A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World (2007) https://youtu.be/Y9RxmTGHZgE↩

https://reformjudaism.org/beliefs-practices/spirituality/civilized-diet↩

Ibid.↩

Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach

2026-04-05T02:11:00.003+13:00

[Drasha on Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach, 4 April 2026]

Chol Hamoed means “the weekday of the holiday” and the Shabbat that falls during Pesach is Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach We’ve been reading from Leviticus but during Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach we go back to Exodus. Not to the parts about Passover, of course, but to just after the incident of the Golden Calf.

Moses says to God, “Now, if I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways”¹ followed by “Oh, let me behold Your Presence!”²

God has so far spoken to Moses from a burning bush³, turned a staff into a serpent, brought about the ten plagues, freed the Hebrew slaves, parted the Sea of Reeds and “had come down upon [Mount Sinai] in fire”⁴ to speak to the Israelites. Moses has spent 40 days on Mount Sinai talking to God and God had written the first ten commandments on stone tablets. Yet only now does Moses ask to see God.

We can interpret this in two ways: Either Moses has established a strong relationship with God and wants to take it to the next level, or, despite everything that’s happened so far, Moses still does not trust God. There are arguments for both sides.

The verse before this portion, Exodus 33:11, says, “God would speak to Moses face to face [panim el panim], as one person speaks to another.” In Numbers, God tells Aaron and Mirian, “With [Moses] I speak mouth to mouth [Pe el Pe], plainly and not in riddles, and he beholds God’s likeness.”⁵ In Deuteronomy, after Moses dies, it says, “Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses—whom God singled out, face to face [panim el-panim]”⁶ These passages speak to a very close relationship and it seems natural that Moses would want to put a face to the name.

I had a similar experience in 2013 when I received an unsolicited email from someone I’d never met, a woman in New Zealand, a country I’d never heard of. (Coincidentally, I was on holiday in Israel at the time, though I was in the Negev, not on Mount Sinai.) After some back-and-forth emails, I said I wanted to have a video chat and she said, absolutely not, no way, not going to happen. I said something along the lines of I’d have to stop communicating because I didn’t want to be catfished by a 40-year-old guy living in his mom’s basement. She reluctantly agreed to a video chat and, long story short, I moved to New Zealand and married her.

But I digress.

As for Moses still not trusting God, remember at the burning bush, after God lays out the entire plan for freeing the Israelites, Moses says, “Please…make someone else Your agent.”⁷ God becomes angry, ignores Moses’ request and continues telling Moses what to do. That sort of bullying does not engender trust.

And when Moses accepts the task and is on his way to Egypt with his wife and sons, one night God seeks to kill Moses! Zipporah saves Moses when she takes a flint and cuts off her son’s foreskin.⁸ Not the sort of thing you see at a trust-building workshop.

Later, after God gives the Israelites manna, they cry out, “If only we had meat!” Moses complains to God, not for the first time or the last time, “Why have You…laid the burden of all this people upon me?” God replies rather testily, “[I] will give you meat and you shall eat…until it comes out of your nostrils”⁹ Then Moses responds sarcastically, “The people who are with me number six hundred thousand foot soldiers [alone]... Could enough flocks and herds be slaughtered to suffice them? Or could all the fish of the sea be gathered…to suffice them?” God responds just as sarcastically, “Is there a limit to God’s power? You shall soon see whether what I have said happens to you or not!” None of this speaks to a close collaboration between friends.

And the final straw was at Meribah, after Miriam dies and God tells Moses, “Order the rock to yield its water.” But Moses strikes the rock, twice. God reacts badly: “Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them.”

Even at the end, when Moses pleads with God, “Let me…cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan,” God says, “Enough! Never speak to Me of this matter again!”¹⁰

Either way, whether Moses trusts God or not, he asks to see God and God partially agrees, saying “I will make all My goodness pass before you…. But you cannot see My face, for no mortal may see Me and live.”¹¹

As God does this, God says about himself, “God! God! a Deity compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin—yet not remitting all punishment, but visiting the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations.”

From this narcissistic run-on sentence the sages derived the 13 attributes of God:

Compassion before a person sins
Compassion after a person has sinned
Possessing the power to bestow kindness
Merciful [helps people avoid distress]
Gracious [God saves people from distress once it has overtaken them]
Slow to anger [God is patient with both the righteous and the wicked. He gives people time to reflect, improve, and repent instead of punishing sinners immediately]
Abundant in kindness
Truthful (fulfilling His promises)
Keeping kindness unto thousands (of generations).
Forgiving iniquity [corruption of the heart],
Transgression [a willful sin] and
Sin [sin committed out of apathy or carelessness]
And pardoning. [If one repents.]

According to Maimonides, these attributes are not qualities inherent in God, but rather are methods of His activity.¹² In other words, God does not possess human emotions or passions, but these attributes outline God’s ways of governing the world.

Similarly, in the Talmud¹³ these are called derakhim (ways), which calls back to the beginning of today’s portion: “Now, if I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways.”

Maimonides goes on to say that by imitating God's goodness we become, in a sense, agents of divine rule and providence. Perhaps we experience God’s presence through the goodness we create in the world.

These attributes are central to the S’lichot (prayers for forgiveness) and High Holiday services, often recited as a plea for divine mercy. The Talmud¹⁴ explains that God showed Moses a vision of Himself "wrapped" like a communal prayer leader, promising that whenever the people would sin, they could call upon these attributes to evoke mercy.

At a superficial level, we’d all like to “see” God, but I will finish with a warning from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

"I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "The Babel fish could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Shabbat shalom and chag Pesach sameach.

Exodus 33:13 ↩

Exodus 33:18 ↩

Exodus 3:2 ↩

Exodus 19:18 ↩

Numbers 12:8 ↩

Deuteronomy 34:10 ↩

Exodus 4:13 ↩

Exodus 4:24-26↩

Numbers 11:4-23 ↩

Deuteronomy 3:25-26 ↩

Exodus 33:19-20 ↩

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Attributes_of_Mercy ↩

Sifre, Deuteronomy 49 [ed. Friedmann, p. 85] ↩

Rosh Hashanah 17b ↩

Losing it

2025-12-02T02:24:00.005+13:00

A few days ago, I ran across an old receipt and for some odd reason I thought to myself, "Ten months ago I was a happily married man." At the beginning of February, we had just raised enough money to start the Enhertu treatment and the oncologists thought it would give my wife another year or two. It was the first optimistic news we'd had in a while and her death was the furthest thing from my mind. Two weeks later, she was gone.

Today, I went to a gym for the first time in 11 years. I've never been particularly fit but middle-age spread has hit me hard and I've ballooned to 96kg (211 pounds or 15 stones). In my defense, my wife was an excellent cook and, although she always made healthy meals, I always had two (or three) servings. On top of that, after she was diagnosed, she rarely had the energy to do any exercise and I happily chose to spend my time with her on the sofa. I always told myself I'd join a gym after she was gone.

What I didn't appreciate was that, because I said that, joining a gym became emotionally tied to her absence. I thought about it often and I always found an excuse not to join--finances, time, commitment--but in the back of my mind I knew it was because it was one more tiny acknowledgement that she was gone.

Of course, I could have done a million other things to lose weight but I knew those were never going to happen. Last night a friend said she had been diagnosed as pre-diabetic and that was the wake-up call I needed. When I went in to sign up, I don't think the person at the desk even noticed my anguish.

I'm already starting to forget the little things, like how it felt when she touched me. I know it was wonderful and calming and always full of love, and she stroked my head and rubbed my back and held me every day for eleven years, but I can't remember the actual feeling. All those little moment of us just being together, talking nonsense, making plans -- it must have been another person because I can't remember it. Sitting on the sofa with my hand on her leg - she always curled up so her legs were tucked against me - or the feeling of her hand in mine. I would give anything to feel these things again.

The garden actually looks quite good; I think my wife would have been very pleased. The vegetable beds are really taking off and I've just planted clover as a walkway around them. (Last year we layered cardboard and mulch, which worked for a while, but it's a surprising amount of work. Plus the clover should attract bees which is good for the veggies, as well as the environment.)

My wife loved fairy lights and I used to have them in the bushes and strung overhead on bamboo poles. I had to take them off the bushes to do some trimming and never put them back, and I had to take them off the poles when the solar panels were installed and never put them back. I've just done a big trim so I really should put them back up. She would love that.

Hushabye Mountain

2025-11-07T13:05:00.000+13:00

Rae recorded a lot of songs on her iPhone. Most were religious tunes, but she recorded this with a note that she used to sing it to the kids when they were babies.

Lech L’cha - the journey of an everyman

2025-11-01T10:55:00.002+13:00

[1 November 2025]

Last week’s portion ended with the list of descendants from Noah to Abram. It’s been between 368 and 422 years - and ten generations - since the covenant with Noah and Adonai has not spoken to anyone since. Yet, when Abram is 75, Adonai suddenly says to him: “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation…” Thus begins the Jewish story. Not with a world-ending flood, a burning bush, a host of plagues or a parted sea, not with an outstretched arm or signs and wonders, but with two words to an old man: “Go forth.” So who was Abram? All we know is he is a descendant of Shem, whom Noah blessed. All we know of the next nine generations are their names and ages. Abram isn’t rich, he isn’t wise, he isn’t a leader, he isn’t a prophet, he isn’t even described as “righteous” as Noah was. There is nothing special about Abram, and perhaps this is the point. Without vowels, lech and l’cha are both just two letters: Lamed Kaf. “Lech” is translated as “go” and so the Torah could just as easily be interpreted as “Lech lech” – “Go! Go!” That sense of urgency would change the entire interpretation of this parasha. Instead, the sages interpret the second word as “l’cha,” which doesn’t mean “forth” but “for yourself.” Rashi interprets this as Adonai telling Abram: "Go for your own benefit, for your own good: there I will make of you a great nation whereas here you will not merit the privilege of having children. “L’cha” can also be translated as “to yourself.” In other words, go fulfill your destiny. William Schecter notes this “hints at the internal journey Abram is about to take to an elevated spirituality.“ This divine call is an invitation to a spiritual journey, encouraging Abram to trust God, embrace the unknown, and discover his divine purpose and potential, which ultimately requires leaving comfort for sacred growth.” Abram’s name also hints at this journey: Av=father, Ram=high or uplifted. (Later it is changed to Abraham, meaning "father of a multitude.") There are many simple yet powerful words in Torah, such as hineini which we translate as "Here I am" but signifies being completely present in the moment. Sh’ma is translated as “hear” or “listen” but is the central declaration of Jewish faith. Amen can be translated as “so be it” but we use it as an affirmation of our beliefs, our hopes and our prayers. Vayomer Elohim is translated as “And God said” but it actually represents the creation of the universe, the ultimate example that words have power. Lech l’cha – “Go forth" – captures the entire human experience in two words: We must listen, and we must act. Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar writes, “Listening is an act of courage. We must be brave to hear that we are called to great things. It takes an open heart and a strong will to hear lech l’cha, to embark on a journey of [faith and] self-awareness and manifest your life’s purpose.” But back to my point: If Abram wasn’t special, why did Adonai choose to speak to him? Torah gives no answers. In Torah Or, “Rabbi Yitzḥak suggests: This is analogous to one who was passing from place to place, and saw a building with a [candle] burning in it” – a bira doleket – “and asked, ‘Is it possible that this building has no one in charge of it?’” Perhaps Abram was looking at the cruelty and injustice in the world and wondering if anyone was in charge, and, according to Rabbi Yitzhak, Adonai “looked out at him and said: ‘I am the owner of this building.’” Rabbi Nelly Altenburger says bira doleket can be interpreted as either “a palace full of light” or “a palace in flames.” She continues, "All Jews are called to come and try to put out the flames. When the world is catching fire, this is the time to listen to the small, quiet voice that reminds us to have hope, to do what is just, to be extra moral and extra compassionate, to go out of our way to try to stand together with those that are harassed, oppressed and attacked.” So remember, Abram was not special, he was just a man who chose to listen and chose to act. If we believe we have to be chosen before we act, we will never act. First, we must believe we have been chosen. And if you are still waiting for Adonai to speak to you, then you have not been listening.

References

Rosh Hashanah 16b
https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/354318.1
https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-commentary/listening-our-calling (2021)
Bereshit Rabbah 39:1
https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/48403

Drasha Yom Kippur (2025)

2025-10-01T23:29:00.002+13:00

The Talmud teaches, “Three books are opened on Rosh HaShannah: One for the wicked, one for the righteous and one for everyone in the middle, their judgment suspended until Yom Kippur. If they merit, through the good deeds and mitzvot that they perform during this period, they are written for life; if they do not so merit, they are written for death.”

By this logic, my wife should have lived forever. Instead, in 2020, she was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. She was 51. Our youngest child was 15.

Every Yom Kippur, as we read Unetaneh Tokef, we wondered if this was the year she would die “by an untimely death,” and if repentance, prayer and righteousness really could avert the severity of the decree.

The answer is, they could not. She fought for five years – five very long yet also very quick years – and she passed away in February, one day short of her 56th birthday. She said at the beginning of the journey that all she wanted was to see the children become adults. Our youngest turns 21 in two weeks.

I knew, when I started this drasha, that I wanted to discuss this concept of judgement. This is the day of atonement, not the day of judgement. Leviticus 16:29 says nothing about judgement: “And this shall be to you a law for all time: In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall practice self-denial; and you shall do no manner of work, neither the citizen nor the alien who resides among you. For on this day atonement shall be made for you to purify you of all your sins; you shall be pure before יהוה.”

In my search for answers, I found a drasha written by Rabbi Yerachmiel Shapiro in 2023. Rabbi Shapiro kindly gave me permission to use it, although I have amended it for brevity.

A Chassid went to the Baal Shem Tov and said, “Rebbe, I want to see Elijah the Prophet.” “It’s simple,” said the Baal Shem. “I’ll tell you what to do. Get two boxes and fill one with food and the other with children’s clothes. Then, before Rosh Hashanah, travel to Minsk. On the outskirts of town, right before where the forest begins, is a dilapidated house. Find that house, but don’t knock on the door immediately; stand there for a while and listen. Then, shortly before candle-lighting time at sunset, knock on the door and ask for hospitality.”
The Chassid did as the Baal Shem Tov told him. He arrived shortly before evening and stood in front of the door, listening. Inside, he heard children crying, “Mommy, we’re hungry. And it’s Yom Tov and we don’t even have decent clothes to wear!” He heard the mother answer, “Children, trust in G-d. He’ll bring you everything you need!”
Then the Chassid knocked on the door. When the woman opened it, he asked if he could stay with them for the holiday. “How can I welcome you when I don’t have any food in the house?” she said. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I have enough food for all of us.” He gave her the box of food, and they ate. Then he opened the box of clothes and the children all took clothes for themselves. He stayed all night, he did not even sleep, but he did not see Elijah the Prophet.
So, he returned to the Baal Shem Tov and said, “Master, I did not see Elijah the Prophet!” “Did you do everything I told you?” asked the Baal Shem Tov. “I did!” he said. “Then you’ll have to return for Yom Kippur,” said the Baal Shem Tov. “Go back, with another box of food, to the same house. Again, be sure to arrive an hour before sunset, and don’t knock immediately. Wait for a while and just stand in front of the door, listening.”
So, he went back to Minsk and stood by the door, listening. Inside, he heard children crying, “Mommy, we’re hungry! We haven’t eaten the whole day! How can we fast for Yom Kippur?” “Children!” said the mother. “Do you remember you were crying before Rosh Hashanah that you had no food or clothes and didn’t Elijah the Prophet bring you food and clothing and everything else you need?”
It’s a lovely story, and we should all strive to be Eliyahu Hanavi, but that is not my message today.
Today I want to ask, what about the thousands of poor starving families who don’t have Elijah show up with a big bag of food? How come they don’t deserve a miracle? How come their children have to suffer?
Today I want to talk about divine fairness and the High Holiday prayers, specifically Unetaneh Tokef:
We will observe the mighty holiness of this day. For on this day You sit in judgement, every human being passes before You and all their deeds are known to you. And You inscribe their destiny.
On Rosh Hashana it is inscribed and on Yom Kippur it is sealed, how many shall pass away and how many will be born, who will live and who will die, who will have a long life, and who a short life. But Repentance, Prayer, and Charity Avert the Terrible Decree.”
If you take this to its logical conclusion, every year all the wicked people should die, but many evil people seem to do just fine. They perpetuate wars and conflict, and they seem to succeed.
It is so often the most wonderful people who end up with terrible suffering that has no explanation. Could it be that they didn’t do enough teshuva, tefilla, and tzeddaka?
It’s clearly a flawed paradigm, but it extends to a bigger problem in faith.
We believe that God will protect us and take care of us. We believe that our good deeds should translate into reward and protection from above. When someone points out that this is often not the case, it can create doubt for us.
The most famous of Jewish apostates was Rabbi Elisha ben Abuya, who one day declared: Ein Din, V’Ein Dayan- There is not justice and there is no Judge. He became excommunicated and forever known in Talmudic lore as Acher- The Other.
Proverbs 3:12 states: “For whom the LORD loves, he chastens, and afflicts the son of Israel.”
The Talmud, in tractate Brachos, addresses the question of suffering this way:
If a man sees that he will be tormented by a curse, he should search his deeds. If he searches and does not find it, You should understand it to be the suffering of love, as it is said: "For whom the Lord loves He punishes."
Rashi comments: “God makes people suffer in this world even if they are free of sin in order to increase their reward in the world to come – so that they will receive more than their actions merit.”
So suffering can be because of sins, but it can also be from God’s love. There is divine math going on that we can’t see, and in the end, fairness will be maintained. Undeserved suffering in this world is a way to get an even better place in the world to come.
But at the end of the day, even this explanation by Rashi doesn’t sit well with me. It doesn’t explain the deaths or illnesses of children, it doesn’t explain the Shoah. To many Jews, faith often means not understanding God, but I need to understand. And I need to understand in my heart and soul, not just in my mind.
The most logical conclusion when a person is suffering is either, there is no God, or God must hate me, or the contradictory: “I don’t believe in God, because God did this awful thing to me.” And it makes sense: Who could believe in a God that is mean and spiteful?
The Talmud is offering another option: There is no good explanation, but remember God loves you and will never stop loving you. No matter what you go through, you are surrounded in God’s light. Our tradition teaches in numerous places that God is actually suffering with us when we suffer.
So why keep the faulty prayers that rely on a paradigm that we know doesn’t really hold up? Why don’t we incorporate the humble answer into our prayers. Maybe Unetaneh Tokef should say, “We don’t know why you choose who will live and who will die, but please, please, give us and our loved ones another year of life!”
One answer that I find beautiful is the reinterpretation of the terms life and death by the rabbis, also in tractate Brachos: “Tzadikim are called alive even in their deaths, and the wicked are called dead even when they are alive.”
With this approach, who will live and who will die takes on a radically new meaning. You can be sealed in the book of life and still pass away, and you can be sealed in the book of death whilst still alive. You may be breathing, but if you are evil, your soul is dead. Your contribution to the world is nothingness and destruction. But the righteousness of good and holy people reverberates for generations as light and love and holy behavior in their children and grandchildren. They are still alive.
The perspective shared in Unetaneh Tokef is essential to our faith and our survival as Jews. In fact all civilized society depends on it. Belief in the paradigm of reward for the righteous and punishment for the wicked is the foundation of our belief that God is good and fair. For the good of our psyche, for the continuation of faith, and for our society to hold up, we must hold tight to the belief that the world is good and that God is fair.
When Moses says to God, “Show me your Glory,” God replies, “I will pass All My Goodness before you.” This is one of the only times when God refers to Godself. And what is God’s self-definition? Not awesome power, not greatness, but rather, “Goodness”. You don’t even have to say, “I believe in God.” You could say, “I believe in Good” and I think it would mean the same thing.
So how do we believe in Good in a world that seems so bad, so often? We cling to the paradigm of divine fairness and goodness as the cornerstone of our faith.
It is exactly this reason, that when we lose someone we love, we say, “Baruch dayan ha'emet” – “Blessed is the true judge" – and why all the prayers at a funeral relate to Tzidduk Hadin- doing our very best to accept that God is still fair, God is still good. We will not give up on this life and close our hearts with darkness. At the moment when the pain is the worst, we are called to proclaim, I believe that the world is still Good!
This is how the Jewish people have survived, because we’ve never lost hope. We strengthen ourselves in faith, and never give up on our mission of mimicking the goodness of the Creator, by being good ourselves.
We wish each other a happy, sweet, healthy, prosperous New Year, and we believe it with all our heart, while at the same time knowing that whatever will come our way, we will never lose our gratitude for life, and the continued desire to make the world a better place for all of God’s children.
May we all be written and sealed in the Book of Life - for joy, for health, for nachas, for shalom, and may we all merit to see and believe that this world is filled with God’s Goodness embracing us and strengthening us with every breath.

G'mar chatima tovah.

Drasha Ki Tavo

2025-09-13T03:26:00.001+12:00

Devarim 27:11 - 29:8 (third triennial)

Today’s portion includes one of the most visual and downright bizarre sections of the Torah: The Blessings and the Curses. Moses orders that, after the Israelites have crossed the Jordan, six tribes will stand on Mount Gerizim and six tribes on Mount Ebal, with the Levites standing in the valley between them. When the Levites shout a curse, the people on Mount Ebal respond “Amen” and when they shout a blessing the people on Mount Gerizim respond “Amen.” It’s a striking visual, but what does it mean?

The first eleven curses are actually laws, and the twelfth is a curse for those who were already cursed by breaking the first 11 laws, so really its a double-curse. This is followed by 15 verses of blessings for those who obey God and faithfully observe the divine commandments and 52 verses of curses for those who do not.

And some of these curses are really disturbing, such as:

“And as יהוה once delighted in making you prosperous and many, so will יהוה now delight in causing you to perish and in wiping you out.”
“יהוה will afflict you at the knees and thighs with a severe inflammation, from which you shall never recover.”
“You shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but none will buy.”
“And she who is most tender and dainty among you, the afterbirth that issues from between her legs and the babies she bears; she shall eat them secretly, because of utter want.”
“The life you face shall be precarious; you shall be in terror, night and day, with no assurance of survival.”

"Deuteronomy" is derived from the Greek term for "repetition of the law" and this portion reflects Leviticus 26, which includes: “If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments, I will grant your rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit. You shall eat your fill of bread and dwell securely in your land. I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down untroubled by anyone. But if you do not obey Me and do not observe all these commandments, if you reject My laws and spurn My rules, so that you do not observe all My commandments and you break My covenant, I in turn will do this to you: I will wreak misery upon you—consumption and fever, which cause the eyes to pine and the body to languish; you shall sow your seed to no purpose, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set My face against you: you shall be routed by your enemies, and your foes shall dominate you. You shall flee though none pursues.”

In 1943, a German scholar named Martin Noth argued that Deuteronomy, along with the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, formed a unified "Deuteronomic history" which were written during the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE to explain successes and failures as the result of faithfulness or disobedience. These blessings and curses can be applied to a person or to an entire society. They are also reflected in the story of Jonah, which we will read on Yom Kippur.

Walter Brueggemann notes that curses were often used to bind treaties in the ancient world: if you break your promises, these are the bad things that you can expect. Here, the curses are transformed from a political context to a theological one. “A self-conscious Israelite community may have borrowed a covenant form deliberately to offer its covenant with YHWH as a radical alternative to alliance with Assyria.” In other words, even after being defeated, with no land and no power, Deuteronomy was a middle finger to the victors, showing the Israelites would worship no one but God.

Amy Frykholm notes that in the middle of the curses, verse 47 provides a completely different interpretation: “Because you would not serve your God יהוה in joy and gladness over the abundance of everything, you shall have to serve—in hunger and thirst, naked and lacking everything—[your] enemies.”

“When we don’t live in joy and gratitude, when we become stingy and mean, the goodness of God becomes blocked and distorted—in us, through us. From the simple failure to heed joy comes deprivation—and deprivation spreads. The slavery from which you were delivered, the text says, will return to you along with all that came with it: the labor, the plagues, the suffering.”

She also notes that some of the first things to be blessed (and cursed) are “your basket and your kneading bowl.” “Humans took the elements of earth, water and fire and created civilisation…so if your blessings start with bread and the implements of bread, then you are very close to the essence of your civilisation. Such a blessing draws our attention to the mundane, to the basic work of survival within the human family. Daily actions and daily choices have consequences far beyond their seeming simplicity.”

The book of Joshua, the first book of the prophets, immediately follows Deuteronomy. In Joshua 8, after he slaughters the entire town of Ai and impales the king on a stake, he builds an altar on Mount Ebal. He then gathers the Israelites in the valley, half facing Mount Gerizim and half facing Mount Ebal, and reads the words of the blessing and the curse from Deuteronomy. I feel like Moses would have been disappointed.

https://www.walterbrueggemann.com/2001/10/01/deuteronomy-abingdon-old-testament-commentary/

https://www.christiancentury.org/article/features/blessings-and-curses

Music to remember

2025-08-14T16:28:00.005+12:00

Five years ago, in my post on Music to break up by, I noted, "songs I thought were about break ups could equally apply to death." I've always felt song lyrics were modern poetry, and these are some of the song lyrics that remind me of my wife, either because they reflect her beauty, her vivaciousness (often contrasted with my curmudgeonliness) or my grief. Occasionally, all three.

[In no particular order. All links open Spotify in a separate window.]

"Carry You" (2020, Tim Minchin, sung by Missy Higgins)

If they would let me trade
I'd give a year for half a day
Just curled up on the sofa with you

Sometimes I feel you with me in the dark
And your face is in the faces of the strangers walking by me in the park

And reflected in your eyes
Is all my love and all my lies
Is all my promise and my pride
Is all my fear and all my fight
Is all my dread and my denial

So though we cannot be together
I know that I will carry you wherever I go
I will carry you
Lord knows
I will carry you
I will carry you

"The Shadow of Your Smile" (1965, lyrics by Paul Francis Webster, sung by Tony Bennett)

Our wistful little star
Was far too high
A teardrop kissed your lips
And so did I
Now when I remember spring
All the joy that love can bring
I will be remembering
The shadow of your smile

"Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)" (1994, written and sung by Billy Joel)

Goodnight, my angel
Time to close your eyes
And save these questions for another day
I think I know what
You've been asking me
I think you know
What I've been trying to say
I promised I would never leave you
And you should always know
Wherever you may go
No matter where you are
I never will be far away

"Make You Feel My Love" (1997, written by Bob Dylan, I prefer the Billy Joel version)

When the rain is blowing in your face
And the whole world is on your case
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love

When the evening shadows and the stars appear
And there is no one there to dry your tears
I could hold you for a million years
To make you feel my love

I could make you happy, make your dreams come true
There's nothing that I wouldn't do
Go to the ends of the earth for you
To make you feel my love
There is nothing that I wouldn't do
To make you feel my love

"All at Once" (1991, written and sung by Bonnie Raitt)

Take me where I only feel
The wind across my face
Let me know there's someplace left for me
Waiting there for me

All at once I hear your voice
And time just slips away
Nothing they could say can hold me here

"Softly, as I Leave You" (1966, English lyrics by Hal Shaper, sung by Brenda Lee)

Softly I will leave you softly
For my heart would break if you should wake and see me go
So I leave you softly long before you miss me
Long before your arms can beg me to stay
For one more hour or one more day
After all the years I can't bear the tears to fall so
Softly, as I leave you there

"Lullaby" (2006, written and sung by the Dixie Chicks)

As you wander through this troubled world
In search of all things beautiful
You can close your eyes when you're miles away
And hear my voice like a serenade

How long do you wanna be loved?
Is forever enough, is forever enough
How long do you wanna be loved?
Is forever enough
'Cause I'm never, never giving you up

"Love Is the Way" (2009, written by Declan O'Rourke and sung by Eddi Reader)

[My wife walked down the aisle to this.]

In the light of this day, all things make sense somehow.
It's like I've been in a haze for what seems like years now.
Well I suppose I am drawn to bright and beautiful things,
And I suppose I am home every time I am in your company.

All the moments we share just between me and you,
Are among those I'd care to treasure my whole life through.
I don't know where we're going; who knows what we can be?
I just know we are glowing, we have so many possibilities

"Amoreena" (1970, lyrics by Bernie Taupin and sung by Elton John)

And when it rains, the rain falls down
Washing out the cattle town
But she's quite safe up far away in her eiderdown
And she dreams of crystal streams
Of days gone by when we would lean
Laughing, fit to burst, on each other

If only, I was nestling in the cradle of your cabin
My arms around your shoulders, the windows wide and open
While the songbirds and the sycamore are growing in the valley
Oh, I miss you Amoreena, like the king bee misses honey

"Beautiful" (1972, written and sung by Gordon Lightfoot)

At times I just don't know
How you could be anything but beautiful
I think that I was made for you
And you were made for me

Laughing eyes and smiling face
It seems so lucky just to have the right
Of telling you with all my might
You're beautiful tonight

"Time in a Bottle" (1972, written and sung by Jim Croce)

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save every day
'Til eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I'd save every day like a treasure and then
Again, I would spend them with you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I've looked around enough to know
That you're the one I want to go
Through time with

If I had a box just for wishes
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
Except for the memory
Of how they were answered by you

"Who Will Sing Me Lullabies" (2007, written and sung by Kate Rusby)

I lay here, I'm weeping for the stars, they have come
I lay here not sleepin' now the long night has begun
The man in the moon, oh, he can't help but cry
There's no one to sing me lullabies

"Be My Life's Companion" (1951, lyrics by Bob Hilliard, sung by The Mills Brothers)

[My wife sang this to me at our wedding. And she was right--she loved me so much that she'll never grow old.]

Be my life's companion and you'll never grow old
I'll love you so much that you'll never grow old
When there's joy in living you just never grow old
Be my life's companion and you'll never grow old

"And I Love You So" (1970, written by Don McLean, I prefer the Perry Como version)

And I love you so
The people ask me how
How I've lived till now
I tell them I don't know

I guess they understand
How lonely life has been
But life began again
The day you took my hand

The book of life is brief
And once a page is read
All but love is dead
That is my belief

And yes, I know how lonely life can be
The shadows follow me, and the night won't set me free
But I don't let the evening get me down
Now that you're around me

"Until I hold you once again" (2008, written and sung by Reg Meuross)

[This did not feature in our wedding, but my wife did wear a red dress that day.]

It’s time to put your red dress on
See how beautiful you are
Now the night is almost gone
You will be my falling star
As the shadows turn to gold
And our tears to morning rain
Leave a promise I can hold
Until I hold you once again

"Homeless" (2001, written and sung by Loudon Wainwright III)

When you were alive, I was never alone
Somewhere in the world, there was something called home
And as long as you lived, I would be alright
There were reasons to win, and incentives to fight

People have called to find out if I'm fine
I assure them I am
But I'm not, it's a lie
They say in the end, your good friends pull you through
But everyone knows, my best friend was you

Now I feel like I'm homeless but I will be alright
I'll get through the days
I'll face down the night

"Irresistable You" (1961, written by Al Kasha and Luther Dixon, sung by Bobby Darin)

Your magic hands
Your loving eyes
Your kissable lips
Make my heart realize
I'm in love, I'm in love
And I know it's true
'Cause who wouldn't fall
For irresistible you

Don't you fret
Don't you worry bout me
'Cause I'll never forget
How much you mean to me
I'll love you, I'll love you
My whole life through
Tell me, who wouldn't fall
For irresistible you

"I'll Be Seeing You" (1938, lyrics by Irving Kahal, sung by Jimmy Durante)

I'll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day through

I'll be seeing you
In every lovely summer's day
In every thing that's light and gay
I'll always think of you that way

I'll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new
I'll be looking at the moon
But I'll be seeing you

"I Remember Everything" (2020, written and sung by John Prine)

I remember everything
Things I can't forget
The way you turned and smiled on me
On the night that we first met
And I remember every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morning light
Like roses miss the dew

I've been down this road before
Alone as I can be
Careful not to let my past
Go sneaking up on me
Got no future in my happiness
Though regrets are very few
Sometimes a little tenderness
Was the best that I could do

"Love Story (You and Me)" (1968, written and sung by Randy Newman)

[Whenever things got overwhelming, and they often did, I'd sing just the chorus to Rae.]

You and me you and me, baby
You and me you and me you and me, baby
You and me you and me you and me, baby
You and me you and me you and me, baby

"My One and Only Love" (1953, lyrics by Robert Mellin, sung by Sting)

The touch of your hand is like heaven,
A heaven that I've never known.
The blush on your cheek whenever I speak
Tells me that you are my own.

The very thought of you makes my heart sing
Like an April breeze on the wings of spring,
And you appear in all your splendor,
My one and only love.

"My Lady's a Wild Flying Dove" (1964, written and sung by Tom Paxton)

My lady's a wild flying dove
My lady is wine
She whispers each evening
She's mine, mine, mine

She tells me she's learning
How full her cup can be
She asks me to help her
But I know, she's teaching me

"What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life" (1969, lyrics by Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman, sung by Frank Sinatra)

I want to see your face in every kind of light
In fields of dawn and forests of the night
And when you stand before the candles on a cake
Oh, let me be the one to hear the silent wish you make

What are you doing the rest of your life?
North and South and East and West of your life
I have only one request of your life
That you spend it all with me

Through all of my life
Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall of my life
All I ever will recall of my life
Is all of my life with you

"Twinkle In Your Eye" (2014, written and sung by James Lee Stanley)

The first time I heard you laugh my heart just skipped a beat
I think I knew for certain then that we were bound to meet
I crossed the room to find you and I’ve never lost the rush
I feel each time you smile at me, I feel each time we touch

We had our ups and downs for sure with all that we’ve been thru
I would not be the man I am today if not for you
And when I lost my own belief, you still had faith in me
Now every day I’m living for the moment I might see…

The a twinkle in your eye each time you look at me
The twinkle in your eye and I always feel such joy to see
The twinkle in your eye when you look at me

"I Have Met My Love Today" (2018, written and sung by John Prine)

I've been holding on for you
Dreams I've had have all come true
I have seen your picture, and I knew you right away
I have met my love today

Day-by-day, our love will grow
Day-by-day, our love will show
We'll go on forever, and I can truly say
"I have met my love today"

"Summers End" (2018, written and sung by John Prine)

The moon and stars hang out in bars just talking
I still love that picture of us walking
Just like that ol' house we thought was haunted
Summer's end came faster than we wanted

Come on home
Come on home
No you don't have to be alone

"Song For You Far Away" (1985, written and sung by James Taylor)

Open the door it takes me back
Oh, it takes me back
Mention your name, and I'm gone again
Oh, I'm gone again

This is a song for you far away from me
And you're far away from me
Talking about far away
Far away from me

"You Were Meant For Me" (1996, written and sung by Jewel)

Put on my PJs and hop into bed
I'm half alive but I feel mostly dead
I try and tell myself it'll all be alright
I shouldn't think anymore tonight

Dreams last for so long
Even after you're gone
And I know that you love me
And soon you will see
You were meant for me
And I was meant for you

"Fields of Gold" (1993, written and sung by Sting)

Will you stay with me?
Will you be my love?
Upon the fields of barley
We'll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we lie in fields of gold

Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
Among the fields of gold

Lastly, Robert Burns may have been Scotland's national poet, but he also wrote a number of songs, including "Auld Lang Syne" and "My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose."

Ae Fond Kiss (1792, english translation)

Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, no cheerful twinkle lights me,
Dark despair around overtakes me.

Had we never loved so kindly,
Had we never loved so blindly,
Never met - or never parted -
We had never been broken-hearted.

One fond kiss, and then we sever!
One farewell, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I will pledge you,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

House update

2025-08-06T23:33:00.262+12:00

It's been over a year since my last house update, and there's a lot going on.

First, after all the work we did to create the master bedroom with en suite and french doors onto the deck, I've decided to move out of the master bedroom and into what was my study/guestroom. I'm not doing this because the master bedroom reminds me of Rae (everything in the house reminds me of Rae) but because I decided to list the master bedroom on Airbnb. Last weekend, I took all of Rae's stuff out of the closet, which was pretty hard, but I'm keeping it until the girls can go through it and see what they want.

Rae and I had hoped to re-do the kitchen when we re-did the rest of the house, but we ran out of money and didn't want to dip into the "war chest" we'd set aside for the self-funded drugs. I can't tell you how grateful I am that so many people contributed to my wife's Givealittle page, and how frustrated I am that nobody would take their money back after she passed away so suddenly, but those funds covered her burial and so I still have the "war chest." It seems reasonable to use that money to finish Rae's vision, even if she isn't around to enjoy it.

I spoke to three kitchen designers and got three completely different versions, but they all follow Rae's requirements: A galley kitchen with sliding doors at either end, so the kitchen can be cut off from the rest of the house as needed. Right now the kitchen is a demented u-shape design that wastes so much space, that the only option is to gut it and replace it.

Unfortunately, as I was in the middle of the discussion with the kitchen designers, we discovered the little balcony off the living room was leaking water into the garage. Over the past two months, I've had four builders out, all with wildly differing views on how to solve it, and not one of them will give me a cost estimate.

(If money were no object, I'd look at enclosing that balcony and making a sun room, or even moving the exterior wall and incorporating that space into the main living area, but that's not a priority right now. I just need to it to stop leaking.)

On that note, when we had the roof painted last October the first thing they did was pressure-wash the roof and our guest bathroom looked like someone had been murdered in there. That's how we discovered there were problems with the skylight. (And based on the layers of caulking, it looks like these have been problems for years, so I'm not sure how the property inspector missed it...) Of course, they no longer make that kind of skylight so the only option is to replace it. In June, I had a skylight company over to give me a quote and mentioned I was re-doing the kitchen and somehow he convinced me to put a new skylight in the kitchen, as well. He gave me a good deal for both so, even though the kitchen is on hold, I need to take care of the bathroom so I'm going ahead with the kitchen skylight.

Also last October, when the roof painters were setting up scaffolding around the house, I also looked at solar panels because (obviously) they'd need scaffolding as well. The bank offered a "good energy" loan that was 1% interest for three years for things like double glazing and solar panels, and I wanted to take advantage of that. After a month of negotiating and finally selecting a vendor and organising a date, the bank told me the house market in Wellington had fallen and if I took out the loan my "loan to value" would be too high and I'd need to pay another $1,500. I told them to pound sand.

After Rae passed away, the same bank wouldn't just take her name off the mortgage, but instead made me take out a new mortgage from scratch. It was ridiculous, especially since they knew Rae wasn't earning anything so the fundamentals hadn't changed. But I went through the charade and noticed that, for whatever reason, they had set the value of the house higher. This didn't affect the loan but it did mean the loan-to-value amount was lower and so I wouldn't need to pay the extra $1,500. They confirmed that was true so I contacted the three solar companies and asked if they needed scaffolding (since it was long gone). One said yes so they were out. One said no but he'd increased his cost by $1,800 so he was out. One said no and had increased his cost slightly, but was also using better panels so the system would generate slightly more electricity. I signed up.

I'm also waiting for a part to try and repair the spa, which has been out of commission since February. I'm promised it will be here this month. If it doesn't work, the spa guy want to replace the controller, which is going to cost a few thousand dollars. 😢

And lastly, I decided I'd get a mosaic to put on Rae's garden beds. (Something really creative, like "Rae's garden beds.") I know someone who does large mosaics so I thought she'd jump at the chance, but instead she said, "You know, I'm teaching a group of friends how to do mosaics, so why don't you come along and then you can make it yourself?" That sounded like a terrible idea so of course I agreed.

So that's seven big things, plus several little things:

1. I got quotes to replace some of the windows (the north-facing ones that get the brunt of the winds) with double-glazing, but it's much more expensive that I'd expected. I'm hoping to get a better mortgage rate in December, which may allow me to extend the "good energy" loan to include the windows.

2. Last summer I installed a metal shed but decided to move the door to the other side, which created a host of unforeseen problems. The reason I moved the door was because there was a hydrangea in front of it, but that hydrangea didn't really do much last summer so I've since had it removed. I may try to move the door back, but it was riveted in place so it will be a real pain to undo.

3. I haven't been able to park my car in the garage since January. It's just a cavalcade of crap going through there. I really want to get it organised so I can charge my car at night again, instead of worrying about my neighbour Karen (not her real name, just her attitude) complaining about my car in the shared drive.

Wish me luck.

An open letter to my first girlfriend

2025-08-04T23:27:00.000+12:00

I've written this letter a dozen times over the past 30-plus years. Of course, each time it is completely different because I've been a different stage of my life, but the one constant is I've never sent it. I think it's because I'm afraid you wouldn't care.

First, I want to apologise for how we separated, as there were miscommunications and misunderstandings all around. Ultimately it was the right decision, because I still had to grow up and you had to deal with some of your demons, but I never meant it to be hurtful. I think you believed I was having an affair with Dawn, and I want you to know that was absolutely not the case. Yes, we did end up together, but at the time it was not even on my radar.

Not long after we separated, I had my first career break, as the department right next door to mine was looking for a developer and a co-worker recommended me. They required a bachelor's degree and thank goodness I'd been taking those night classes in electronics, as I was able to continue that and get my degree in a year. I moved to Orange County for that year and absolutely hated it -- as soon as I graduated, I moved to the South Bay and I was able to walk to work. (That's also when Dawn and I moved in together.)

I should note I wasn't allowed to keep my fish tank at the new job, and in any case Oscar the goldfish had long outgrown that little 8 gallon tank and I'd upgraded to a 30 gallon tank, and then 50 gallons. Fish husbandry became a bit of an obsession and I ended up with four tanks between 100 and 250 gallons, plus a koi pond inside my house, but I get ahead of myself.

I think Dawn wanted a pet but couldn't because of my asthma and allergies, so she got an iguana and named him Alex after a character on Star Trek: Next Generation. (He turned out to be a she.) I did love her but it was completely unreciprocated. I had to stop taking her out for walks when she was three-feet long, and even friends hesitated to visit when she reached five-feet. (Most of it was tail but she had free rein of the house. Potty-training an iguana is an experience.)

My father died when I was 24. He was in the hospital and the doctor told us he had just a few days left, when the Northridge Earthquake destroyed my parents' home. It seemed like a cosmic joke. I think my mother was 55 at the time, and she survived almost 30 more years.

A few months later I bought a house in Lomita. It was pretty unique because it had a two-storey atrium inside, and I planted a large ficus and built the aforementioned koi pond. The iguana liked to jump from the upstairs onto the ficus. One day she slipped out an open window and was gone for almost six months. Turned out she was just two houses down and when the owner hired someone to trim his trees, they returned her.

Even at the time, I referred to that period as the salad days because we were dual-income no kids, but there was a shadow on the horizon: Dawn's grandparents had owned property in rural Pennsylvania -- Amish country -- where she grew up and she wanted to refurbish it and move there. My neighbor in Lomita cautioned me to do it while I was young, so if things fell apart I could still recover. He said if I waited for retirement, I'd be stuck, and truer words were never said.

I didn't have many hobbies and spent my non-working time either working on the house or watching old films at old cinemas. (It's probably not surprising how many historic cinemas are in LA.) I bought a used convertible to enjoy the weather and everyone joked I was having a mid-life crisis at 28. Then I got my next big career break: I was working at a consulting firm on a project for Honda during the dot-com bubble and I decided to quit and do independent consulting. Honda hired me for an outrageous $100 per hour and kept me full-time for six years.

Meanwhile, the value of the house in Lomita had gone from $200,000 in 1994 to $800,000 in 2006. Between that and savings, I had over $1 million US dollars. I had decided -- over Dawn's protests and her mother's threats -- to turn the property in Pennsylvania into a bed and breakfast, both to have an income and to take advantage of tax credits for restoring an historic property for commercial use. (The main building dated to 1760.) I should probably note Dawn's parents were running a wolf sanctuary on the property...because.

I figured $1 million was enough to restore the property, establish the business and still provide a sufficient cushion. I was wrong. Part of the problem was I sent Dawn to Pennsylvania to oversee the project and keep costs down, but she did the opposite. She insisted on perfectionism and things like painting, which should have taken weeks, ended up taking months. All told, it took 18 months and $1.3 million just to get the doors open.

Not unsurprisingly, those 18 months were rough. I was working all day and trying to start a business at night. Dawn hired an old friend of hers to restore the windows, which became very problematic. I knew that before I met Dawn she had a serious cocaine addiction, but she was clean when I met her and after fourteen years of being sober it never occurred to me she'd start up again, but her friend became her dealer and eventually she started sleeping with him. I was completely oblivious and, to add insult to injury, we got married during this time.

As you're well aware, I always felt marriage was a religious institution that I wanted nothing to do with. However, the IRS didn't recognize de facto relationships and since Dawn owned the property but I had the income, the only way to take advantage of the tax credits was to get married. (Spoiler: There is another barb in this tale.) Given what was going on behind my back, I can only assume Dawn went ahead with the marriage because she was afraid I'd stop paying for everything. Nevertheless, it all came out a few months later -- too late to have the marriage annulled -- and in fact I did freeze the money and the whole project came to a stop. Dawn got a job paying $20,000/year and by my calculations it would take her about 60 years to finish the restoration.

Weirdly, I felt worse about the restoration than about the relationship. I felt like the worst thing I could do was spend all that money and abandon the project halfway through. Even though I could walk away with some money left, it wasn't enough to save my house and I had already mentally checked out at work, so I couldn't see another path. (I also didn't know the depths of Dawn's activities at that time.) Instead, I told Dawn I forgave her (I didn't) and started the project back up. It was a very long six months, partly because I knew I was spending money on something I would not get to enjoy, but also because I was lying to all of my friends as I knew they would not understand why I needed to do this.

On 4 July, 2006, I quit my job, put the Lomita house for sale and drove to Pennsylvania to get the B&B open. (I had to drive because iguanas can't fly.) I had a little office on the third floor and I slept there. (Poor Alex was also stuck in that room when she was used to having full roam of the house.) Those next three months were a complete blur but the B&B was an amazing success; the occupancy rate was much higher than I'd expected, and I'd even hired the first employee. By the end of October I felt like my role had played out, but there was one last issue that hadn't been resolved: The house in Lomita hadn't sold. So I packed a suitcase and flew back, arriving for Halloween.

For many years, Halloween had been our thing: We invited friends over for pumpkin-carving parties and spent way too much money on decorations. That Halloween I sat on the floor in a dark house because I didn't have candy or furniture. My relationship was over and at that point I was a million dollars in debt. To this day, I don't understand why I chose to fly back rather than drive my car and bring more of my stuff, but I think it was a mixture of grief and despair.

When I got back it was patently obvious why the house hadn't sold, and I couldn't believe the realtor hadn't said anything. Without the furniture, the house looked dated and dirty. I spent the last of my money replacing the carpet, removing the popcorn ceiling and painting. I then hired someone to stage the house, and it sold a few weeks later. (The realtor then tried to take credit for this, which is why I hate realtors to this day.)

It was now Christmas and I had no job, no house and no money. I still had good credit, though, and I realised (because our finances were still linked) that Dawn had missed a payment on a loan which triggered the interest rate to skyrocket. Again, for reasons that are beyond me, I decided -- without even telling her -- to transfer that loan to myself. It was for $30,000. Dawn sent me a pair of Amish oven mitts. For years I joked about my $30,000 oven mitts.

All of my friends were in LA, and they were all very supportive, but I felt like I was starting my life over again at the age of 37, and I didn't want to just do the same things again. Working in IT, a lot of my friends were immigrants, and I'd always admired their ability to navigate two worlds. However, I knew I was hopeless with languages so I limited my choice to English-speaking countries: Canada was too much like America, I felt (having been in Toronto for two weeks on a business trip), I couldn't stand the Australian accent so I chose England. (At the risk of foreshadowing, I never considered New Zealand. I'm not even sure I knew it existed at that point.)

I sent off the paperwork for a UK visa and hit an unexpected snag: I needed to show a certain income for the past 12 months, and since I couldn't "prove" my income from the B&B, I didn't qualify. I'm not used to being told no--and I don't like it--so I decided to get a regular job for 12 months and apply again. But one thing I was very clear about: It couldn't be in LA. Apart from the weather, I never really liked LA, and while moving to rural Pennsylvania might have seemed crazy to some, I was happy to do it just to get out of LA!

Years before, my brother had moved to Northern California and when he had his first child, my mother followed. I went and stayed with my mom while I looked for a job in San Francisco. My mother and I never got on particularly well and within two weeks, when one of my friends offered me a job in downtown LA, I took it.

I'd worked in downtown for several years and really enjoyed it, so this time I decided to live there, as well -- I rented a loft conversion and walked to work. I took advantage of the subway system and was out most nights, going to shows or restaurants. I didn't save any money, but over those 12 months I really learned to love LA. I also got into a relationship and she was quite surprised at the end of the 12 months when I announced I was moving to the UK.

(My ex-wife was also confused when I stopped at the property in Pennsylvania to say good-bye to her mother. I haven't talked to my ex in many years, but her Mom and I are still in touch.)

Before I left, of course, I said good-bye to all my friends, including the Allens. We had lost touch for many years and, coincidentally, we had both became vegetarian during that time. They even started a vegetarian website so we often met up at a restaurant they were reviewing. True to form they invited me to a restaurant where they were meeting some South African friends, and when I mentioned I was moving to London and didn't have a job yet, they gave me their daughter's phone number because she worked in IT for British Airways.

I arrived in London in May 2008, a date I'll never forget because the Great Financial Crash didn't hit the US until about August, but it started in London -- the financial capital of the world -- in May. It ended up taking me over a year to find a job. I did call the friend's daughter and she didn't help me find a job but she did take me for a vegetarian meal (the whole family was vegetarian) and I have to admit, I fell for her hard. I was 38, she was about 18 months younger, and while you were the prettiest woman I've ever met, she was a very close second. I spent three years trying to get that relationship to work and, to be honest, I felt this was my opportunity for redemption, since I wasn't able to make our relationship work.

Unfortunately, I ultimately failed again. (I am reminded of the adage: "The only common denominator in your dysfunctional relationships is you.") It was quite bizarre: We had gotten engaged, we'd bought (and renovated) a house and she was trying to get pregnant, and yet I still didn't feel like we were in a relationship. I adored her but it felt like riding a mechanical bull, and I eventually had to get off.

She was Jewish (in case I needed any more parallels with you) and when she was trying to get pregnant, she said she wanted to raise the child Jewish. I didn't really know what that entailed so I spoke to a rabbi, and he suggested I come to the conversion classes because all they talk about it what it means to be Jewish. So for a year I went every Monday night for three hours, plus I learned some basic Hebrew. After the relationship ended, the rabbi asked what I was going to do, and I said I was going to convert. Since that had never been the reason for me attending, he was quite surprised, but I'd always described myself as a reluctant atheist and I really found something spiritual in progressive Judaism. Since I was American, I was already circumcised, and since I was vegetarian, I didn't have to give up pork. All I had to do was go before a Beit Din and the rabbi assured me that the one thing they never asked about was God. I went to the Beit Din and the first thing they asked me was about my relationship with God.

(I said something ridiculous, about the mysteries of the universe and referring to "that" as God. I don't think they bought it but they converted me anyway.)

Ridiculously, by this point it was about six months since I'd ended the engagement and I was dating another South African Jew. (She wasn't vegetarian but she did keep kosher, so vegetarian wasn't an issue.) After her I dated a Sikh woman who was drop-dead gorgeous, but I knew I had to be with someone Jewish. (My cousin was very disappointed as she said we would have created the cutest babies.)

I converted in December 2011 and by 2013 I was seriously considering making Aliyah. Work had me in northern England during the week (working for the nuclear decommissioning authority, of all places) and I had moved to Reading to save some money. I had several good friends, including one woman who lived on a kibbutz when she was younger, an Italian woman who thought London was a shithole and someone I'd worked with at Honda who had moved to London with his wife and their little girl, Alice, whom I adored. I'd gotten permanent residency and was just a year away from being eligible for UK citizenship. I had every reason so stay but for some reason I wanted to go. I decided to visit Israel in August, partly to see the Perseid meteor shower from the Negev, but mainly to see if I could live there.

I should note that when I was getting ready to start the renovation on the B&B, it was the early days of the Internet and someone suggested I write a blog on the renovation process for marketing purposes. Apart from my fish updates (don't ask) I hadn't done any creative writing since high school, and I really enjoyed it. When I moved to the UK, I started a blog -- this blog -- just to document my experiences, and left it public so my friends could read it. While I was in Mitzpe Ramon for the meteor shower, I got an email from a woman in New Zealand who said she'd read my blog and then felt bad about it because it seemed really personal, so she was apologising for reading it.

If I'd been in the UK, I probably wouldn't have even responded, but there wasn't a lot to do in Mitzpe Ramon during the day (and it was 105F in the shade) so I wrote back, and she wrote back, and next thing we're having video chats, and I found myself falling for this Jewish woman from Scotland who now lived in Wellington with her three kids, aged 8, 10 and 12. In January 2014 I flew out to meet her, leaving just before her eldest daughter's bat mitzvah. I came back in April and then I gave notice at work and booked a one-way flight in September.

(I would have gone earlier but my work required a three-month (!!) notice period, plus I'd applied for British citizenship and was waiting for that. That came through two days before I left the UK, but please don't tell them that.)

I can't explain it, but I moved in with her and the three kids and I immediately felt at home. The NZ website assured me IT was on their skills shortage list and I'd have no trouble getting a work permit -- they lied. It actually took over a year to get my work permit. I had some savings but it was hard. Plus she had a nightmare of an ex-husband: When she applied for child support he sued for full custody, even though he worked outside of the country for eight months of the year! It took almost two years to get through the family court system and when the judge finally told him he couldn't have custody if he wasn't going to be in the country, he moved out of New Zealand altogether and didn't see the kids again for eight years. (And even that visit I organised!)

So I effectively raised these three kids and they are smart and beautiful and for some reason they love me. 😀 In 2016 my partner was diagnosed with breast cancer, but they did surgery and radiation and assured us they got it all. We finally got married in 2018, but in May 2020 -- just as Covid-19 was starting -- she started having trouble breathing. Doctors in hazmat suits ran all the tests and told us the cancer had returned, and now spread to her lungs. It was stage 4 and the five-year-survival rate was less than 25%. She took all the right drugs and three types of chemo but it finally got her in February, the day before her 56th birthday. She'd made it four years and 9 months.

I wish I could explain how magical those ten years were, how much love I felt, and even though she had her demons and we fought about the stupidest things, I loved her so much. If I was still looking for redemption, I found it with her. It's been almost six months and I still feel like I'm learning how to put one foot in front of the other again, but I wouldn't have traded that time with her for anything.

I wish I could tell you what comes next, but if there's anything I've learned in life it's that "Mann Tracht, Un Gott Lacht." I buried my wife in the Jewish section of the cemetery in Wellington and I bought the plot next to her, so I have an idea of where this all ends. It took me a while to realise I am the same age as my mother was when my father passed. Right now, imagining 30 years without her is overwhelming, and I feel like the only thing that will save me are the kids. Thankfully, they are all better than my mother's kids!

So that's my story in a nutshell. I often think about you, which is natural because you were such a big part of my formative years. When I listen to the Beatles' "Across the Universe" I remember you saying the line, "Nothing's gonna change my world" applied to me. I never really understood what you meant by that, but I look back and think: I've become vegetarian, Jewish, British and Kiwi; I've lived in three countries, renovated four homes, opened a bed and breakfast and raised three kids and an iguana; and yet, I'm still me. Maybe I'm a little wiser, a little more experienced, a little less cocksure and a little slower to give advice. I'd like to think my world is much bigger than when we first met, but I can't say that my world has fundamentally changed, and I'm honestly ok with that. Overall, I have to admit, I like myself, so I wouldn't really want to change.

But I also know I have you to thank you for putting me on the right path. I was a scared little 18-year-old, terrified of embarrassing myself. You were the one who gave me the confidence to go out and conquer the world. I knew that if someone like you found me worthy of love, then I would be okay. I look at my kids and watch the small steps they are taking and think how lucky I was to have you. If I had the choice, I wouldn't have changed a thing. In fact, the only thing I would have changed in my life would be to get my late wife a mammogram in 2014. Beyond that, I think my life unfolded exactly how it needed to. In fact, I think about how my wife would have coped without me -- dealing with cancer, three kids, a toxic ex-husband -- and know that I was right where I was supposed to be.

P.S. I read the article in the "Justice Report News" and my heart goes out to you. You've always been on the right side of history, and you should be celebrated as a hero. I don't have any words of wisdom, only know that someone halfway around the world appreciates you.

Drasha on parasha Devarim (slavery)

2025-08-02T18:44:00.004+12:00

We are starting Devarim, or Deuteronomy, the fifth book of Torah. It represents Moses’ renewal of the Sinai covenant with the next generation, who would soon enter the Promised Land1. Moses recounts the events of the past 40 years to the Israelites camped on the banks of the Jordan. In fact, "Deuteronomy" is derived from the Greek term for "repetition of the law."

Today’s portion recounts Moses’ appointment of leaders, the sending of the spies, and the crisis of faith that led to the forty-year stay in the wilderness. Moses reminds the people of their victories over Moab and Ammon and the settlement of their land by the tribes of Reuben and Gad and part of Menashe, and the appointment of Joshua as Moses’ successor.

However, in honour of Mona’s birthday and the anniversary of the UK Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, I’m going to discuss slavery in Torah. The Hebrew term eved, translated as either slave or servant, appears roughly 800 times across the Tanakh. (But unhelpfully, not once in today’s portion.)

I want to tell you that Torah advocated a more progressive, enlightened view of slavery. I want to tell you that slavery at the time was different from the racist and vicious slavery of the Atlantic slave trade. I want to quote Rabbi Shai Held2 who wrote Devarim 15, “radicalizes the requirements laid out in Exodus. Not only is the tenure of indentured servitude given a firm limit of six years3 but the Israelite is enjoined to help the newly freed slave achieve a fresh economic start.” Even while telling the Israelites how to treat slaves, God says to keep this commandment because “you were slaves in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you.”

But therein lies the problem: The Torah knew slavery was wrong! Tzvi Freeman writes, “The central event of the Torah narrative is the liberation of an entire nation of slaves from a cruel oppressor. Torah is about liberty, human dignity and respect.”4 Exodus 20 contains the ten commandments and the first one begins, “I am the Lord thy god, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” Yet the very next chapter contains the rules for Hebrew slaves! Slaves are directly referenced as chattel, as property belonging to their masters, and the life of a slave is even given a price: 30 shekels of silver (Exodus 21:32). Slaves could be beaten (Exod 21:20-21), taken as concubines (Gen 16:3-4; Exod 21:8-11) and raped without serious consequence (Lev 19:20-22).

In Genesis 16, Hagar, Sarai’s maidservant and the mother of Ishmael, was an Egyptian slave. Sarai tells Abram, “Consort with my maid; perhaps I shall have a child through her.” When Hagar does become pregnant, Sarai complains and Abram responds, “Your maid is in your hands. Deal with her as you think right.” Sarai treated Hagar so harshly that she ran away, but an angel convinced her to return. After Sarah gives birth to Isaac she tells Abraham, “Cast out that slave-woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

According to Jonathan Schorsch5, Hebrew slavery was prohibited during the Rabbinic era for as long as the Temple in Jerusalem is defunct. Maimonides proposed that a non-Jewish slave should be offered conversion and, if accepted, would then be released because Hebrew slaves were not permissible. If the slave did not accept conversion, the Jewish slave owner should sell the slave to non-Jews.6 It is not clear if this convention was ever adopted, but in order to fulfill three of Maimonides’ 613 mitzvot, you will first need to own a slave!

By 1783, an anti-slavery movement had begun in Britain. Josiah Wedgewood – of pottery fame – designed a cameo that depicts a kneeling black man in chains with his hands raised to the heavens inscribed with the phrase "Am I not a man and a brother?" which became quite a popular symbol of abolishionists. In 1807, the UK made the slave trade illegal; slaves could still be owned but no longer sold or transported. Initially, a fine of £100 was applied for every slave found aboard a British ship; however, this led to slaves being thrown overboard whenever a Royal Navy ship approached. In 1827, participation in the slave trade was punishable by death.

In 1804, a slave revolt in Haiti ended with the country’s independence from France. In 1823, the Demerara rebellion in British Guiana saw up to 12,000 slaves revolt. In 1831, the Christmas Rebellion in Jamaica saw 60,000 slaves rise up. By 1832, the profitability of the sugar economy in the British Caribbean was declining and a reform of the House of Commons reduced the influence of wealthy slaveholders, setting the stage for the UK Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

However, it did not take effect for an entire year, and even then only children under the age of six were emancipated. “Slaves” were rebranded “unpaid apprentices” and bonded to their former owner for four to six years. Approximately 800,000 enslaved Africans were affected, but many parts of the Empire were excluded. It would be another 100 years before the last two British territories, Bahrain and Nigeria, abolished slavery.

As Mona made me aware, the British government did make reparations for slavery: The government borrowed 20 million pounds – three-quarters of which was from Nathan Rothschild and Moses Montefiore7 – which was used to pay the owners of registered slaves. In British Guiana, the average compensation was £50 per slave, equivalent to £7,000 today. The slaves themselves did not receive any form of compensation. (Some say the loan from Rothschild and Montefiore enabled this emancipation8, but it is also possible they were just profiting from it.)

As you know, governments finance debt by issuing bonds and then paying interest on that bond every year. Government debt tends to get bundled together, so it’s hard to track a specific loan, but in 2015, the total redemption value of the debt bundle that contained the Slavery Abolition Act loan reached £218 million pounds. For 180 years, British citizens were still paying reparations to slave owners.

And of course, the US continued its slave trade until the Civil War, which was anything but civil. In August 1862, Abraham Lincoln stated: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves I would do it.” In 1863, Lincoln issued his “emancipation proclamation” which declared "that all persons held as slaves within the rebellious states shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." As my ninth-grade history teacher pointed out, by singling out the rebellious states, Lincoln freed all the slaves he couldn’t free (i.e. he had no control over them) and didn’t free any of the slaves he could free (as there were still slave States aligned with the North).

It wasn’t until 1865 that the 13th amendment forbid slavery, but the institutional racism it created still defines America. In 2022, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that, on average, White individuals have $80,040 in savings, compared to $13,370 for Black individuals. In 2023, home ownership among whites was 72.4%, blacks were 44.7%. In 2022, the infant mortality rate for Black Americans was 2.4 times the rate for whites. 35% of the US population hold a university degree but only 26% of Blacks do. Today, the US government continues to honour individuals who waged an insurrection for the right to keep slaves.

We haven’t abolished slavery so much as abolished the word “slavery.” Today, it goes by terms like human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, forced marriage and domestic servitude. In the States, the 13th Amendment banned slavery and involuntary servitude "except as punishment for a crime." In California in 2018, 2,500 incarcerated workers fought dangerous wildfires for $1 per hour. Prison labour is rife in the UK, Australia and China. In India, people are used as security against a loan, and even when they die the debts are passed down to relatives. Undocumented immigrants are taken advantage of across the world. In Qatar, there were over 6,500 recorded migrant deaths during the construction of the stadiums for the FIFA 2022 World Cup. Sexual slavery is prevalent in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.

In 2022, it was estimated 49.6 million people live in modern slavery, roughly a quarter of them children. This includes child trafficking, child soldiers, child marriage and child domestic slavery.9 In the United States between 2002 and 2017, over 200,000 minors were legally married, primarily to adults, with the youngest being only 10 years old.

Coming back to Torah, Tzvi Freeman offers this defense: “The Torah effects change not by imposing an exogenous order, but by revealing the inner, hidden order. The Torah must deal with the world as it is [while] inspiring us with its vision, pulling us into the future.”10 At a time when slaves were considered less than human, Torah reminds us – repeatedly – that we were once slaves and admonishes us to do better. Today, as the problem of slavery has only become worse, it still admonishes us to do better.

I will finish with the lyrics from a song written by Doug Mishkin on his Celebrate Passover album.

Once we were strangers in Egypt

Our people and our land were apart

But when Moses stood before that troubled sea

He made those waters part

Somewhere tonight lives a free man

Somewhere else freedom’s just a song of the heart

We must find the river flowing between them

And make those waters part

Troubled seas rising around us

Sometimes the Promised Land seems hidden from view

So we retell these stories, that’s how we start

To make those waters part

For more information, including ways you can help, please visit www.endslaverynow.org and https://truah.org/

1. https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation-family-edition/devarim/the-teacher-as-hero/

2. https://hadar.org/torah-tefillah/resources/opening-our-hearts-and-our-hands

3. Exodus 20:2; Deuteronomy 15:12

4. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/305549/jewish/Torah-Slavery-and-the-Jews.htm

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_slavery

6. Mishneh Torah, Sefer Kinyan 5:8:14

7. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45299245

8. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/305549/jewish/Torah-Slavery-and-the-Jews.htm

9. Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage, Geneva, September 2022

10. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/305549/jewish/Torah-Slavery-and-the-Jews.htm

Drasha on parasha Chukot (Miriam)

2025-07-05T18:51:00.005+12:00

Numbers 20 begins, “The Israelites arrived in…Zin. Miriam died there and was buried there. The community was without water.”

From that, the sages deduced that the Israelites had not complained about water for 40 years because a magical well1 followed Miriam through the desert, and dried up on her death. Is that the most logical deduction? Probably not, but we still put a cup of water on the seder table for Miriam.

So who was Miriam? She is first mentioned in Exodus 2:4, when Moses is put into the basket by the Nile, “And his sister stationed herself at a distance, to learn what would befall him.” Miriam is the only sister of Moses mentioned in the Torah, so it is reasonable to assume this is her.

When Pharoah’s daughter finds Moses and realises it is a Hebrew child, Miriam asks, “Shall I go and get you a Hebrew nurse to suckle the child for you?” Miriam then calls the child’s mother - her mother - to raise Moses.

Of course, none of this is realistic. Why would a slave girl speak to Pharoah’s daughter? If Pharoah’s daughter realised it was a Hebrew child, and that Pharoah had decreed all Hebrew boys were to be thrown into the Nile, why would she save this one? And why would she need a Hebrew nurse to feed and raise him? Because if that didn’t happen, Moses would not have realised he was a Hebrew, would not have killed the Egyptian beating a Hebrew, would not have fled Egypt, would not have married Zipporah the Cushite, would not have encountered the burning bush and would not have been instructed to return and free the Israelites.

In other words, it’s a MacGuffin, a contrivance that moves the story on. But I digress.

Miriam is first mentioned by name in Exodus 15:20, after the Sea of Reeds: “Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, picked up a hand-drum, and all the women went out after her in dance with hand-drums.” So the first two references to Miriam connect her to water.

It seems odd the Torah mentions Miriam is Aaron’s sister rather than Moses’. The sages teach this is because Miriam was prophesying before Moses was born. Her earliest prophecy, they said, was when she was five years old, that her mother was going to give birth to a son who would free the Jewish people from Egyptian bondage. At the time Aaron was one and Moses would be born two years later.

The Midrash links Miriam and Puah, one of the midwives who disobeyed Pharoah’s command to kill the Hebrew boys, saying they are the same person even though Miriam would have been about five years old at the time!

Another story about Miriam’s wisdom goes:

When the cruel Pharaoh gave the order that all Jewish baby boys should be thrown into the river, her parents decided to separate and have no more children. Being aleader of the Jewish people, Amram had set an example which other Jews were quick to follow, and they too divorced their wives.

The six-year old Miriam said to her father, “Your decree is worse than Pharaoh’s for Pharaoh’s decree was aimed at boys only, while you would prevent both boys and girls from being born.” Amram saw the wisdom of his young daughter and remarried his wife, whereupon the others also remarried their wives. The following year Moses was born.

Miriam then disappears from the Torah for many years, reappearing almost randomly in Numbers 12: “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had taken [as his wife]: “He took a Cushite woman!” Adonai called Moses, Aaron and Miriam to the Tent of Meeting like naughty schoolchildren. When Adonai finished scolding them, Miriam was stricken with tzara'at, which is often translated as leprosy but could be any type of rash or skin disease. Tzara'at is often considered to be the punishment for lashon hara, evil speech, which includes gossip, slander, rumours and deceitful speech.

Why didn’t Aaron get punished? Some believe it was because as the High Priest, a skin disease would have left him impure and unable to perform his duties. In any case, Moses intervenes and God heals Miriam but requires her to be isolated for a week. The Israelites wait until Miriam can join them before moving on (possibly because she had the well).

I want to come back to “Cushite” because this is often interpreted as Miriam not approving of Zipporah’s ethnicity or colour. Kush is often understood to be a reference to Nubia, which is modern-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan, indicating Zipporah had very dark skin. However, Rabbi Abraham Ibn [ebun] Ezra notes Zipporah is a Midianite, and Midianites are Arabs, so the complaint could not have been about her ethnicity.

Rashi suggests Miriam is not criticising Moses for marrying a Cushite, but instead for separating from her. There are many discussions about Moses being celibate2; Rashi references Rabbi Nathan, who says:

Miriam was beside Zipporah when Moses was told that Eldad and Medad were prophesying in the camp. When Zipporah heard this, she said, “Woe to their wives if they are required to prophesy, for they will separate from their wives just as my husband separated from me.”3

Finally, Miriam is last mentioned in Deuteronomy 24:9, in a warning about an outbreak of tzara'at: “Remember what your God יהוה did to Miriam on the journey after you left Egypt.” It is not clear if this is a warning to guard against evil speech, or just dealing with skin diseases in general.

Coming back to Miriam’s well, after the Hebrews complained about the lack of water, Adonai told Moses, “Take the rod and assemble the community, and before their very eyes order the rock to yield its water.” But Moses…struck the rock twice with his rod. Out came copious water, but Adonai said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them.”

Why did Moses strike the rock when Adonai told him simply to speak to it? Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers a simple explanation: He had just lost his sister. “Bereavement leaves us deeply vulnerable. In the midst of loss we can find it hard to control our emotions. We make mistakes. We act rashly. We suffer from a momentary lack of judgement.”

Aaron, Miriam and Moses died within twelve months of each other. Aaron died on the 1st of Av, Miriam on the 10th of Nissan and Moses on the 7th of Adar. Miriam was 126 or 127. If the 10th of Nissan sounds familiar, it is because it was one year to the day of her death that the Jewish people crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land.

1. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3916196/jewish/Miriams-Well-Unravelling-the-Mystery.htm

2. https://www.thetorah.com/article/moses-separated-from-his-wife-between-greek-philosophy-and-rabbinic-exegesis

3. Based on Tanchuma Tzav 13 (see https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/4240317/jewish/The-Untold-Story-of-Zipporah-Wife-of-Moses.htm)

Drasha on parasha Naso (priestly blessing)

2025-06-07T18:56:00.004+12:00

Three weeks ago, I talked about the Kohanim, so it seems relevant that this week's parashat includes the priestly blessing (In Hebrew: ברכת כהנים, birkat kohanim).

In Orthodox services, Kohanim deliver the priestly blessing during the Amidah. In Progressive Judaism, rabbis often say it at the end of services. Many parents say it to their children on erev Shabbat.

Here are several translations:

The JPS Contemporary Torah:

יהוה spoke to Moses:

Speak to Aaron and his sons: Thus shall you bless the people of Israel. Say to them:

יהוה bless you and protect you!

יהוה deal kindly and graciously with you!

יהוה bestow [divine] favor upon you and grant you peace!

Thus they shall link My name with the people of Israel, and I will bless them.

From the New King James Bible:

"And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying:

Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying: In this way you shall bless the children of Israel; you shall say to them:

May the LORD bless you, and keep you;

May the LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you;

May the LORD lift up His face to you, and give you peace.

So shall they put My name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them."

From Mishkan T'filah (page 121)

May God bless you and keep you.

May God's light shine upon you, and may God be gracious to you.

May you feel God's presence within you always, and may you find peace.

From Bob Dylan:

May God bless and keep you always

May your wishes all come true

May you always do for others

And let others do for you

And from Star Trek:

Live long and prosper.

During the High Holy Days, the kohanim spread their hands over the congregation, and the custom is to spread their fingers to form the letter Shin, the same letter found on the mezuzah. Spock used a single-handed version of this gesture for the Vulcan salute. (Both Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner were Jewish.)

In 1979, two silver scrolls were uncovered at Ketef Hinnom, southwest of the Old City of Jerusalem, which contained a variation of the Priestly Blessing. The amulets were dated paleographically to the late 7th or early 6th century BCE, during the First Temple period, making them the oldest known Biblical text that has been found.

Of the priestly blessing, Rashi wrote: “Do not bless them in haste, nor in hurried excitement, but with full consciousness (kavannah), and with a whole heart.”

The text is clear, these blessings come from God, not the priests, and the last line emphasizes this. “Thus they shall link My name with the people of Israel, and I will bless them.” Rabbi Neal Loevinger wrote, “In other words, God did not want these ritual leaders to have Divine powers, but rather, a full humanity — and maybe that’s why these words still move us today.”1

Rabbi Alex Israel wrote, “The priests are to bless the people by putting into the public consciousness the notion of God as a source of all goodness. Once the nation understands that their fortunes are intimately tied up with God, then, and only then, will God issue the blessings for the nation”2

Rabbi Elisa Koppel noted the next line after the birkat Kohanim is: “On the day that Moses finished setting up the Tabernacle, he anointed and consecrated it and all its furnishings.”

She writes, “When we bless others, the place in which we find ourselves becomes a holy place. Only after the people have been blessed could the structure that allowed for God to dwell among them be complete. Holy community must precede holy space.”3

Rabbi Lord Sacks wrote, “If you seek to understand a people, look at its prayers. The Jewish people did not ask for wealth or power. They did not hunger after empire. They had no desire to conquer or convert the world. They asked for protection, the right to live true to themselves without fear; for grace, the ability to be an agent for good in others; and peace, that fullness of being in which each of us brings our individual gifts to the common good. That is all our ancestors prayed for, and it is still all we need.”4

And no drasha would be complete without a reference to kabbalah. “koh tevarkhu” (כֹּ֥ה תְבָרְכ֖וּ) is translated as, “thus shall you bless…” The Zohar (III, 146a) says koh is an allusion to the divine light of Creation. The value of koh (כה) is 25; the 25th word of the Torah is “light.” During the High Holy Days, Kabbalah teaches the hands come together in a samekh, not a shin, the only circular letter in the Hebrew alphabet, representing infinite cycles and endless blessings. Sefer haTemunah teaches that the proper shape of a samekh is a combination of a kaf and a vav. Kaf literally means the “palm” of the hand, and the vav represents a shining ray of light. These are the hidden rays of light, the light of koh, emerging through the hands of the kohanim as they bless. It is also why it is customary not to look directly at the kohanim when they relay the blessing, as the hidden light may be far too intense.5

1. Rabbi Neal J. Loevinger, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/human-vessels-for-blessing/

2. https://www.etzion.org.il/en/tanakh/torah/sefer-bamidbar/parashat-naso/naso-priestly-blessing-1

3. Elisa F. Koppel, https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-commentary/blessing-faces-and-places

4. https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/naso/the-priestly-blessings/

5. https://www.mayimachronim.com/secrets-of-the-priestly-blessing/

Drasha on parasha Emor (Kohanim)

2025-05-17T18:48:00.012+12:00

Emor translates to “speak.” It begins with Leviticus (Vayikra) 21:1:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה אֱמֹ֥ר אֶל־הַכֹּהֲנִ֖ים בְּנֵ֣י אַהֲרֹ֑ן

יהוה said to Moses: Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron

So, who are the Kohanim? The word Kohen derives from a root common to the Central Semitic languages and is used to refer to all priests, Jewish or pagan.1 The first person in the Torah referred to as a priest is in Genesis 14:18

וּמַלְכִּי־צֶ֙דֶק֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ שָׁלֵ֔ם הוֹצִ֖יא לֶ֣חֶם וָיָ֑יִן וְה֥וּא כֹהֵ֖ן לְאֵ֥ל עֶלְיֽוֹן׃

And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was a priest of God Most High

Jewish priests are first mentioned in Exodus 19:6

וְאַתֶּם תִּהְיוּ-לִי מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִי,

And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests

In Exodus 13, after the ten plagues and before the sea of reeds, יהוה tells Moses, “Consecrate to Me every male first-born; human and beast, the first [male] issue of every womb among the Israelites is Mine.” The sages interpreted this to mean the first-born males were set aside to be priests.

In Numbers 3, shortly after the Levites joined Moses in the incident of the Golden Calf, יהוה said “I hereby take the Levites from among the Israelites in place of all the male first-born: the Levites shall be Mine.” In Deuteronomy 10:8-11, “the LORD set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the Ark of the Covenant, and to stand before the LORD as his ministers, and to pronounce blessings in his name.” However, the Levites are not referred to as kohanim.

Instead, back in Exodus 28, יהוה says, “You shall bring forward your brother Aaron, with his sons, from among the Israelites, to serve Me as priests.”

Halachically speaking, the kohanim are required to be of direct patrilineal descent from Aaron.2 While there is evidence from Josephus and rabbinic sources that this tradition existed by the end of the Second Temple, a historical-critical reading of the biblical text suggests that the origin of the priesthood is much more complex, and that for much if not all of the First Temple period, kohen was not synonymous with "Aaronide". Rather, this traditional identity seems to have been adopted sometime around the second temple period.

Instead, the “presumption of priestly descent”3 states that a Jewish man is a kohen based not on genealogical records but rather by observation of his priestly behavior as recognized by his peers and community. Once the presumption was made, Maimonides considered it to be in force unless a valid objection to his lineage is made before a Beit Din.

Rabbi Luria (of Lurianic Kabbalah) tells the story of Hai Gaon, who would travel to Jerusalem for Sukkot and circle the Temple Mount with hundreds of kohanim in the company of Elijah the Prophet. One year, a student noticed him laughing during the procession. Asked why, Hai Gaon responded that Elijah revealed to him that, of the hundreds of kohanim that accompanied him in a haughty way, none were legitimate kohanim, except for one kohen who proceeded humbly.

Since men can only inherit a Y chromosome from their father, in 1997 Karl Skorecki and collaborators from Haifa, Israel, hypothesised that sons of Aaron would share similar markers, or haplotypes. In their study, "Y chromosomes of Jewish priests," published in the journal Nature4, they reported 48% of Ashkenazi Kohens and 58% of Sephardic Kohens had the J1 Cohen Modal Haplotype, compared to 5% in the general Jewish population. This indicated a common ancestor from before the destruction of the Second Temple and the Jewish diaspora.

However, further research – including by the original authors – have not only challenged the original conclusions, but shown the opposite: The genealogical record "refutes the idea of a single founder for Jewish Cohanim who lived in Biblical times.”5

Today, in Orthodox and Conservative Judaism, kohanim retain a lesser though distinct status, including certain honors and restrictions. When the Torah reading is performed in synagogue, a kohen (if one is present) is called for the first aliyah and a Levite for the second6. The kohanim also deliver the priestly blessing during the repetition of the Amidah. Orthodox rabbis will not perform a marriage between a kohen and a divorced woman7, and kohanim may avoid corpses except for immediate family members. Kohen only refers to men although some Conservative synagogues will allow a “bat kohen” to take the first aliyah and perform the priestly blessing8.

Reform Judaism does not afford any special status or recognition to kohanim.

Given all the above, we might expect kohanim to be somewhat rare. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, Cohen is the most common surname in Israel9. (The next most common is Levy.)

1. See Genesis 14:18, 41:45,50, 46:20, 47:22,26; Exodus 2:16, 3:1,18:1; et al.

2. Mark Leuchter (2021). "How All Kohanim Became Sons of Aaron". TheTorah.com

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_priestly_descent

4. https://www.nature.com/articles/385032a0

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Aaron

6. https://jewishaction.com/religion/jewish-law/whats-truth-giving-levi-first-aliyah/

7. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/468267/jewish/Kohen-Marriages.htm

8. http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/teshuvot/docs/19912000/rabinowitz_women.pdf

9. Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), 2019

Eulogy

2025-02-20T18:58:00.015+13:00

Well, that was quite a ride.

When I look back at all the things we did, all the things that happened, it’s hard to believe we only had ten short years together. When I moved to New Zealand, the kids were 14, 12 and 10. Now they’re all young adults, embarking on very different studies and careers.

Many of you know Rae and I met online, when she emailed me out of the blue after doing some serious online stalking. I went back and re-read some of those early emails, and they are terrifying. On 14 Aug 2013, she wrote to me:

I grew up in Scotland, the product of a happy marriage with a large Jewish family around me. I went slightly off the rails when my dear dad passed away when I was still a kid. I miss him still. There is so much I would have loved to have shared with him. I doubt he would have approved of some of the choices I have made since his passing. In fact he probably would have tried to stop me from making several key decisions, such as striking up a relationship with the person I eventually married. Truth be told though as I am pretty obstinate I may not have listened. It is quite bizarre that I have lived far longer without him than with him.

I responded with an equally thoughtful, introspective and sympathetic message:

A Scottish lass, no less! Which part? I will admit I prefer Edinburgh to Glasgow, and I haven't visited any other part of Scotland. Of course I love the accent, even if I have no idea what they are saying. Do you know Carol Kirkwood, the BBC weather presenter? For me, she is like porn in the morning. (Did I really just say that?)

The red flags were waving at full mast, but somehow Rae (who was from Glasgow) saw past all of that. I was 44 and never had kids, but somehow Rae fully trusted me with hers. That was Rae in a nutshell: Someone who was always giving, and in doing so could lift those around her. I thought of Rae as a being of pure love, as close to an angel as I can conceive. I am the exact opposite, but Rae inspired me to be a better person. I often said to her, “When I grow up, I want to be just like you.”

I honestly can't remember my life before Rae, and I honestly can’t imagine my life without her. During our cancer journey, everyone worried about me, and I always said that as long as I had Rae, I could do anything. It was when I didn’t have Rae that they should worry.

Last November, for my birthday, Rae gave me this tie, which I thought was odd because I never wear ties anymore. Today she gave me an occasion to wear it and I realise she was, as usual, two steps ahead of me.

To Rae I say, you were amazing, you were intoxicating, your smile lit up my world. I always told you how smart, clever, funny and beautiful you were, and you always argued with me. Well, you can’t argue with me anymore.

To the kids I say, I will never fill Mum’s shoes, but you know that I will always be there for you. I see so much of Mum in each of you, I know you will all be bright lights in this dark world.

To the community I say, I know you only put up with me because I was with Rae, but please try to put up with me for a while longer.

And to God I say, thank you. I don’t know why you chose to take Rae at such a young age, but thank you for letting me be with her at all. Thank you for letting me take care of her when she needed it. Thank you for giving me these wonderful children, my “pop-up family” as Rae called it. Thank you for bringing me to Wellington and this community. Thank you for the medical miracles that kept Rae alive for an extra five years, and thank you for nationalised health care that kept us out of bankruptcy. Rae was a blessing, and even though she is gone, I continue to feel blessed.

One year

2024-06-05T01:39:00.001+12:00

It was May 13. 2023 when we moved into the new house. We'd taken ownership a few days earlier, but had waited for the new carpeting before we moved in. Then two months later we moved out for three months while 25% of the house was gutted and rebuilt. Then in February we had the deck built - 21 square meters or 226 square feet, not including the spa, taking up nearly half of the yard. We put in the no-dig garden over summer and in April we dug that out and built raised garden beds, taking up another quarter of the yard. We also installed two heat pumps, replaced all the curtains, changed a lot of the electrics, painted the hallway and updated the kitchen. We've spent so much time working on the house, it's hard to believe we've had anytime to enjoy it.

And we did it on a shoestring. All up, we've probably spent about NZ$100,000. (The budget was $50,000.) We re-used most of the bathroom fixtures. I dug the holes for the deck posts myself. The spa was bought on eBay for $200 and just needed a new pump, which cost $250. Most of the curtains were on sale and we hung them ourselves. The french door was bought from a recycler. I did much of the painting and the deck staining and built the garden beds. There were only a few indulgences: Rae got a rain shower for the guest bath; I got a shower dome for the en suite. There were a few unexpected expenses: Our sleigh bed frame wouldn't fit in the new bedroom so we ended up buying another (straighter) frame, but even then we got it second-hand. The only new furniture we bought - two dressers, a shoe rack and am outdoor sofa - were all very cheap.

But we love it. We love the new layout, we love going out on the deck, we love getting in the spa, we love sitting in the living room, we love entertaining guests, we love the new pantry. It's a far cry from the dowdy house with the weird layout we looked at just over a year ago. When we found out our offer had been accepted, we were both a little disappointed - we'd bid on several houses that we were much more excited about. But after we put in the carpet and drapes, we could really start to feel the house coming together. And when the renovation was finished, and we got to move into the new master bedroom, it was really exciting. And when the deck was built, and it suddenly had that "indoor/outdoor" feel, we could not have been happier.

There's still a mountain of things to take care of, but there always will be. Last weekend I took off the back door, which was peeling badly, stripped it and painted it and now it looks great. I also started painting the handrails. Down the side of the house, which was full of weeds last summer, we've started to cover it with cardboard and mulch. The cardboard we collect from the dumpster behind the local shops, and the mulch is available for free.

Before and after of the back door:

Drasha 18 May 2024

2024-06-03T17:15:00.001+12:00

Leviticus 24:19-20

If any party maims another: what was done shall be done in return—fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

This portion is a call-back to Exodus 21 with its more pedantic, “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.“

A literal reading would appear to be a barbaric form of justice and retribution. Furthermore, it doesn’t distinguish between intentional and accidental damage. If you hit another car and the other driver suffers a fractured rib, should your rib be fractured as well? Who is going to do it? And how does it help the other driver get his car fixed, or get back to work? This parshah appears to be an affront to our modern sensibilities and conceptions of how justice should be administered. However, the sages turned this literal reading on its head.

In a 2016 article in Scientific American, called The Psychology of Disproportionate Punishment researchers found humans are prone to “intergroup bias.” When online participants were shown a video of a crime and asked to deliberate on appropriate punishment, they were generally reasonable and fair. However, when asked to make a split-second decision, the results were dramatically different: If the person was considered an “outsider,” they were subjected to vicious retribution.

The article concluded, “While our slow, thoughtful deliberative side may desire to maintain strong standards of fairness and equality, our more basic, reflexive side may be prone to hostility and aggression to anyone deemed an outsider.”

So perhaps the Torah isn’t justifying violence so much as demanding restraint and restricting the retribution to be no worse than the crime. Morris J Fish, in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, argued that proportionality is a moral principle of punishment.

“Eye for an eye” seems to have been borrowed from Babylonian laws. The Code of Hammurabi (circa 1750 BCE) states:

If a man has destroyed the eye of a man of the gentleman class, they shall destroy his eye ....
If he has destroyed the eye of a commoner ... he shall pay one mina of silver.
If he has destroyed the eye of a gentleman's slave ... he shall pay half the slave's price.

The Torah introduces two key differences. First, in Babylonian law crimes against one's social betters were punished more severely, whereas the Torah states, “You shall have one standard for strangers and citizens alike.” Second, in the Code of Hammurabi the punishment for theft is death whereas the Torah values human life ahead of personal property.

Regardless of the intent, the Rabbis in the Gemara found “eye for an eye” impossible for practical reasons:

Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai argues it is impossible to inflict the exact same injury on the perpetrator as that suffered by the victim, with the example of a victim who is partially blinded in one eye.
Beit Hezekiah notes the process of inflicting injury on the perpetrator may result in a more unjust outcome, using the example of maiming a person causing complications leading to death.
Sa‘adia Gaon asked, “If a blind man should blind the eye of a sighted person, what should the punishment be?”

They all agreed the Torah must refer to monetary compensation. Maimonides wrote:

How do we know that the intent of the Torah's statement with regard to the loss of a limb, "an eye for an eye," is financial restitution? That same verse [in Exodus 21] continues "a blow for a blow." And with regard to the penalty for giving a colleague a blow, it is explicitly stated: "When a man strikes his colleague with a stone or a fist…he should pay for his being idled and for his medical expenses." Thus, we learn that the word tachat (תחת) mentioned with regard to a blow indicates the necessity for financial restitution, and so one can conclude that the meaning of the same word with regard to an eye or another limb is also financial restitution.

Ayin tachat ayin, eye for eye. 'תחת' (tachat) literally means “under” but contextually means “in place of.” Consider how it is used in Genesis 22 when Abraham offers the ram as a sacrifice in place of his son Isaac, and again in Genesis 44 when Judah begs Joseph keep him in place of his brother Benjamin.

Lastly, Exodus 21 says, “if a ransom is demanded, the owner may redeem his life by the payment of whatever is demanded.” And Numbers 35 says, “You may not accept a ransom for the life of a murderer.” In other words, kofer, a monetary payment for atonement, can take the place of bodily punishment for any crime except murder, and that exception is only because the Torah places such a high value on human life that there can be no possible compensatory payment.

(I will add that even for murder, the Talmud set such a high bar that they effectively did away with the death penalty, and today all major branches of Judaism reject capital punishment.)

Rabbi Jonathan Kligler notes, “The Talmud even develops a comprehensive set of standards for compensation, taking into account damages, pain, medical expenses, unemployment, and mental anguish.” However, their standards were a bit funny:

For damages, the court appraises how much a slave would be worth before and after the injury.
For pain, the court evaluates how much money a person would be willing to take in order to be made to suffer in the same way.
For loss of livelihood, the court uses the pay scale for a “watchman of cucumbers.” (When I read that, I thought it must be a joke, but Isaiah 1:8 says “The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a watchman’s hut in a cucumber field.” Apparently, it was a thing, although "cucumbers" was a generic term for melons.)

It should be noted there is not a single case where punishment involved amputation or mutilation in all Hebrew Scripture. This is not a question of rabbis reinterpreting Torah for a more enlightened age, but hints that the Oral Torah always taught that this was not to be taken literally.

This begs the question, why didn’t the written Torah just say this? Maimonides suggested that had the Torah simply ordered the aggressor to pay damages, this would have actually diminished the value of life. A wealthy man would have thought it sufficient to pay the victim and be done with it. The Torah is teaching that if one person harms another, he should understand how it would feel to have the same done to him, contemplate the profound damage to the quality of life he has caused, beg forgiveness from the injured party, perform Teshuva and ensure a similar act will not be repeated.

Rabbanit Judith Levitan put it similarly: “Perhaps the seemingly harsh language of the Torah is an echo of the victim’s roar of pain. It is a reminder that whatever compensation is provided, money remains an imperfect way of making up for the loss suffered. What is lost – the ability to see, to walk, to feel safe, to trust - can never be fully replaced. The victim’s experience and memory of the violent act can never be fully erased… We need the raw emotion of the written law, tempered with the logical and measured approach of the oral law, to help the victim acknowledge the pain and then contain it.”

So “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” is not a barbaric and outdated form of retribution. In fact, Leviticus (va-yikRA) 19 specifically forbids this: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your fellow [Israelite] as yourself.” Instead, it is a call for empathy and restraint, seeking a way to make the victim whole whilst reminding the perpetrator that this is not possible, and telling us all we should always be mindful about how we treat others.

Dry measurements

2024-05-31T17:08:00.001+12:00

I spent last night filling 40-litre bags of mulch (don't ask) which got me to thinking: Why does the metric system use the same volume measurement (litres) for liquids and dry goods, while the US does not? Even worse, why does the US use the same terms for entirely different concepts?

Let's start with the ounce. As a unit of weight, it's 1/16th of a pound. As a unit of volume, it's 1.8 cubic inches. For water, 1 ounce of volume is about one ounce of weight. (And one pint of water weighs about one pound.) So that makes sense for water, but not for other liquids: One ounce of canola oil weighs 0.95 ounces while one ounce of honey weighs 1.48 ounces. To deal with this confusion, "fluid ounce" is supposed to be used for volume and "ounce" for weight, but they are still often used interchangeably.

The US (liquid) gallon is defined as 128 fluid ounces of water, which is 231 cubic inches. However, the US (dry) gallon is defined as 1/8 of a US bushel, which is 268.8 cubic inches. In other words, a dry gallon has a 16% greater volume than a liquid gallon.

"Dry" gallons have become obsolete in the US, but the "dry" pint is still used in supermarkets (e.g a pint of blueberries).

Teaspoons, tablespoons and cups have the same volume for liquid or dry measures (0.3, 0.9 and 14.4 cubic inches, respectively). That is to say, there are two cups in a "liquid" pint but 2.33 cups in a "dry" pint.

In the metric system, 1 litre is always 100 cubic centimetres, so moving between the two is very straightforward. (30 litres = 0.03 cubic meters, which is roughly 1 cubic foot.)

So I could have described my 40 litre bag as 9 "dry" gallons or 10 "liquid" gallons, but Americans would have looked at me like I was crazy.

The "official" US dry measurements are pint, quart, peck (8 quarts) and bushel (4 pecks, about 1.24 cubic feet). However, there are many other measures, usually for specific commodities:

sack (cement, 1.15 cubic feet)
dry barrel (4.08 cubic feet)
dry hogshead (sugar, 8.4 cubic feet)
bale (wool or cotton, 13.5 cubic feet)
ton (as a measure of volume, about 60 cubic feet)
cord (wood, 128 cubic feet)

The US liquid measures used to be based on the "minim" which was defined as one drop of water. The dram was 60 minim, the teaspoon was 80 minim, and the tablespoon was 3 teaspoons or 4 drams. Of course, this lead to large variances, depending on the temperature and water quality, so when the US system was standardized in 1893 the values were based on -- I kid you not -- the metric system. So now a drop of water is 0.05 grams in weight and 0.05ml in volume. A teaspoon is 5ml (100 drops of water) and a tablespoon is 15ml. The cup should be 236.6 millilitres but the US rounded up to 240ml. (The UK rounded to 250ml.)

One fluid ounce is defined as 2 fluid tablespoons, which is why I started by saying 1 ounce of water weighs about one ounce -- presumably they started out the same, but since the definition of fluid ounce changed, one ounce of water now weighs 1.04 ounces!

Other liquid measurements include:

jig or shot (3 fluid tablespoons or 1.5 fluid ounces)
gill (4 fluid ounces or half a cup)
pottle (2 quarts or half a gallon)
Beer barrel (31 gallons)
Standard barrel (31.5 gallons)
Whiskey barrel (40 gallons)
Oil barrel (42 gallons)
hogshead (2 barrels or 63 gallons)

By the way, the US is only one of three countries that have not adopted the metric system. The other two are Liberia and Myanmar. It isn't for lack of trying, however: In 1793, Thomas Jefferson requested a standard kilogram from France that could be used to adopt the metric system in the United States. However, the ship was blown off course by a storm and captured by pirates. The Metric Act of 1866 supplied each state with a set of standard metric weights and measures. In 1893, metric standards were officially adopted as the fundamental standards for length and mass in the United States, with the definitions of US customary units based on metric units. In 1966, Star Trek started using metric measures (albeit inconsistently). In 1975, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act and in 1988 the Omnibus Foreign Trade and Competitiveness Act designated the metric system as "the Preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce" and required most federal agencies to use the metric system by the end of 1992. Post-1994 federal law mandates most packaged consumer goods be labeled in both customary and metric units.

On the other hand, TV and screen displays throughout the world are defined in inches. Nobody knows why.

I'll end this where it all started, a UK royal decree in the 13th century: "By consent of the whole Realm the King's Measure was made, so that an English Penny, which is called the Sterling, round without clipping, shall weigh Thirty-two Grains of Wheat dry in the midst of the Ear; Twenty pennies make an Ounce; and Twelve Ounces make a Pound."

A two-month holiday

2023-10-02T17:25:00.001+13:00

Where I left it, the plan was to move back into our house on September 7. Needless to say, that didn't happen. There was some miscommunication which resulted in the plasterer starting two weeks late, which delayed everything else. (Apart from the flooring—for reasons unknown, the builder decided to go ahead and lay the flooring before the plaster and paint. As you can imagine, the new flooring looked like shit when we moved in. Thankfully, most of it came up.)

So our build that was ahead of schedule was suddenly two weeks behind schedule and we were in a blind panic to find some place to live. A friend who was heading to Israel offered us her studio flat for three weeks, another friend offered to host our son and a third friend offered to host our daughter. (She was supposed to be on placement in Gisborne for seven weeks but at the least minute she cancelled it, and then left it to us to find her a place to live. Shis is 22.)

The fixtures finally arrived but it turned out the builder was only interested in the bath, and only because we'd designed the bathroom to the exact width of the bath. He built the bath wall parallel to the hallway, and he built the bedroom wall parallel to the outside wall, so both of those rooms are perfect rectangles. However, we later discovered where those walls intersected – in the en suite – was not square! (When I was measuring the existing rooms, it looked like the hallway was narrower at one end, but I thought I was doing something wrong. I now realise it was because the walls weren't parallel.)

The rest of the fixtures went in the garage, and it was so packed when you opened the door it was just a wall of stuff. We even had to store our bikes elsewhere.

Meanwhile, we started getting nasty emails from our neighbour. The house is actually the rear-unit of a townhouse (or "semi-detached" if you're from the UK) with a shared drive and two garages in between the two. The shared drive is quite small and I'd assumed there was no way to get a car in the garage. I even told the neighbours before we moved in we were going to park our HV on the drive so we could charge it. They did not say anything at the time.

It turns out they normally do keep their car in the garage, but at the time I spoke to them they were storing some stuff for a friend, and so weren't using it. Once the friend collected his stuff, they wanted the drive clear; otherwise they couldn't angle the car into the garage. Except at that point, the renovations had started and the builders were using the drive as a tip/work area. Hence the emails. Unfortunately for her, I have a long history of ignoring people who are complaining, so I didn't respond, which obviously made her even angrier.

We told the builder we had to move again on the 22nd, and to his credit he made a big push to try and get everything finished. Unfortunately this meant that the painter, plumber, electrician and builder were all trying to work on the same day. We stopped by in the morning and they had so many questions, and needed lots of little things (like door knobs) that we ended up spending the entire day with them, adding to the body count. However, by the end of the day everything was looking pretty good so we...moved to another friend's house.

The areas that were renovated looked good but the rest of the house was a disaster. The plasterers, in particular, had sanded down the walls without any protection, and there was plaster dust everywhere. (Funny story, my wife complained and the next day they had taped up sheets to stop more dust. Why they didn't think to do that in the first place is beyond me.) We spent an entire day cleaning the house, and by "we" I mean my wife, son and someone we hired. The two daughters made themselves scarce. Our son just focused on his room because he was desperate to move back, while my wife tackled the rest of the house and I...did other stuff. (Stuff that was important for moving in, like installing toilet roll holders, to be fair.)

It was also Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. My wife was leading two of the services so she took the day before to prepare for that, while I went to the house to do the last final bits to get it ready for move-in...and then got distracted and painted the hallway. Or more specifically, half the hallway. The other half had been part of the renovation and been painted, while the other half was wallpaper. The painter wanted $5000 to strip the wallpaper, smooth the walls and then paint, which was simply not in the budget. Instead, I painted over the wallpaper, which doesn't look great but is good enough. At some point in the distant future, we'll look at stripping the walls, but right now that's not even in the top 10 list of things the house needs.

After Yom Kippur we started shifting things back to our house and finally moved home...into our old bedroom. We'd just spent a lot of money creating a new master bedroom with en suite, but we couldn't move in because our bed was too big. Our sleigh bed is 2.6 meters and the new bedroom is 2.8 meters, so there was only 20cm (about 8 inches) to squeeze past the bed to get to the en suite! The answer was to buy another bed frame, but I wasn't willing to buy new and my wife didn't like any of the used ones we saw,, so we were stuck. However, the day after we moved in, we found a bed on Trademe (New Zealand's answer to eBay) that she liked and we could afford, so we bought it. The only problem is it's in Hamilton, about a six-hour drive away, so that's a project for next weekend.

We moved out on 2 August and moved back on 29 September, so it was like a very expensive holiday, except we didn't go anywhere or see anything. We moved four times (five if you include moving home), almost separated once (that's kind of my thing) and didn't enjoy a single minute of it. While we were in town, living on our own in a studio with a barely-functional kitchen, we thought we'd at least get to experience Wellington's nightlife, but instead we were just fighting all the time. And in the end, we don't have a flash, fabulous space; we just have a functional space. But we are quite happy with how it came out, and we've turned what was effectively a 2 bed/1 bath (with a study and extra toilet) into a proper 3 bed/2 bath home, so I have to believe we've increased the house value significantly. (But don't tell the local council, as they'll just increase the property tax...)

Drasha - 8 July 2023

2023-08-17T00:02:00.001+12:00

My drashot tend to fall into two themes: Family or progressive Judaism. This portion is all about family, so let's talk about progressive Judaism.

The daughters of Z'lofchad petition Moses for their father's holding, and God responds that their request is just. This is often celebrated as women's rights, as progressive Judaism. However, God then spells out male-preference primogeniture: All sons will inherit first, and daughters only if there are no sons. That may have seemed revolutionary at the time, but hardly seems worth celebrating today.

Immediately following this, in Numbers 36, other members of the Menashe clan argue that when the daughters of Z'lofchad marry, their holdings will be transferred to their husbands, thus reducing the Menashe portion. God resolves this by declaring the women who inherit property can only marry within their own tribe. One step forward, two steps back.

As progressive Jews, we constantly struggle with morally problematic statements like this. How do we treat the Torah as a moral authority while honestly confronting the ethical issues it raises? Dr. Rabbi Zev Farber argues that responses fall into three basic categories:

Fundamentalist—Double down and argue that the Torah reflects God's will and must by definition be moral; it is actually our modern ethical sense that is wrong.

Dismissive—Such laws simply showcase the worthlessness of religion, which should be toppled entirely for the betterment of society.

Selective—Point to uplifting parts of the Torah and ignore the problematic ones.

The third option is quite popular because it's easy, but it's also self-serving: How do we engage with the fundamentalists, the dismissives or the apologists if we aren't engaging with the same texts they are? This is not a question of different interpretations; this is them having a viewpoint and us feigning ignorance.

The good news is, we're not the first to grapple with issues in the Torah; the Talmud is almost exclusively dedicated to this. For example, the rabbinic sages were quite distressed by capital punishment: how does Judaism hold that life is sacred when the Torah casually states, "One who insults one's father or mother shall be put to death"?

The sages' response was ingenious: They didn't argue the Torah was wrong, but they put so many restrictions on it that it became moot. Cases concerning offences punishable by death had to be decided by 23 judges, with at least 13 finding the defendant guilty. (And if all 23 find the defendant guilty, then the person is released, because clearly something was wrong with the court.) Two witnesses were required, they both had to be adult Jewish men who had seen the crime in full, had seen each other, had warned the defendant that the crime was a capital offence, had heard the defendant say he was aware but was going to do the crime anyway, and the witnesses had to agree to be the executioners. (Some of this comes from Deuteronomy – "A person shall be put to death only on the testimony of two or more witnesses… Let the hands of the witnesses be the first to put [the condemned] to death" – although in that portion God was only referring to blasphemy and idolatry.)

I think it's fair to say very few executions occurred under these conditions. The Mishnah states that a Sanhedrin that executes one person in seven years — or seventy years, according to Eleazar ben Azariah — is considered bloodthirsty. In 75 years, two people have been executed by the Israeli government: Adolf Eichmann in 1962 and Meir Tobianski in 1948. I don't need to say anything about Eichmann but you may not be familiar with Captain Tobianski. He was accused of spying by the director of the IDF's intelligence branch during the War of Independence, and after a field court martial was executed by firing squad. A year later, an inquiry was held and Captain Tabianski was exonerated, reburied in a military ceremony and his gravestone reads, "Killed by mistake." The man who ordered his execution was tried and convicted of manslaughter.

In 1954, Israel outlawed the death penalty except for treason and war crimes. In 1959, the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Union for Reform Judaism passed a resolution formally opposing the death penalty, calling it "a stain upon civilization and our religious conscience."

Dr. Rabbi Aaron Panken talks of a rabbinical school discussion with Dr. Lawrence Hoffman, debating the difference between "Truth" and "truth". Truth with a capital "T" was a singular, irrefutable truth that could never be changed or adapted, while "truth" with a lower-case "t" represented truths that were malleable, transformed or reformed by time, location and experience, seen differently by those with varying outlooks. By that definition, the Torah is not always "true" but it is always "True" in that its ideas and narratives remain the vital underpinnings of Jewish life, debate and thought.

So the "Truth" of Torah is the march of progress, from stoning rebellious children to supporting them. We celebrate the daughters of Z'lofchad while we reject male-preference primogeniture and the entire concept that when women marry their holdings become the property of the husband. We don't deny the Torah contains these things, but that those were truths - lower case t - for the age and the time that have been re-interpreted under the Truth - upper case T - of tikkun olam, making the world more just over time.

Shabbat shalom.

1 Farber, Z. (2021). Can the Torah Be a Moral Authority in Modern Times?. TheTorah.com. https://thetorah.com/article/can-the-torah-be-a-moral-authority-in-modern-times

2 Exodus 21:17

3 Deuteronomy 17.6-7

4 https://reformjudaism.org/why-reform-judaism-opposes-death-penalty

5 Panken, A. (2015). Torah's Progressive Truth. TheTorah.com. https://thetorah.com/article/torat-emet-torahs-progressive-truth