Extended Interview: Rabbi Shira Stutman Discusses the Amidah Prayer

 

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Angus found me a date at a cocktail party Part 2

The Portobello was a charming Notting Hill hotel with charming interiors and an accurate Victorian style.  Many of the ‘rich and famous’ spent time there thus the staff know to turn a blind eye to the comings and goings of their guests, as well who their guests come and go with.  Plus, since some winning Univision band stayed there, all the rooms now had sound reduction equipment.  I could make this woman squeal at the top of her lungs and even the pigeons on the window sill wouldn’t hear her.

Angus finds me a date at a cocktail party - Part 1

“Doesn’t it bother you when he does that?” Whitfield discreetly whispered under the chatter of the surrounding cocktail party guests.

“Does what?” I asked, already knowing to what he was referring.

“Flirts with women like that!” answered my former physics professor turned friend and returning crew member for our most recent MI-6 assignment.  “It’s rather salacious, don’t you think Deetz?  I mean the whole Crown knows you and Angus are married some four years now.  Won’t this give the appearance that there is ‘trouble in paradise’?”

Tad Whitfield, albeit older and certainly smarter than I when it came to science and engineering, was a complete idiot when it came to relationships – in part due to a descriptive diagnosis of Asperger’s – but I relished his concern.  “For Angus, flirting is like Olympic fencing.  And unlike an Errol Flynn movie, nothing real untoward is going to happen.”  I put my glass of water and lemon on a nearby coffee table, only to straighten and to look down at Whitfield’s scrunched up nose. 

Why Donald Trump Exists and liberals can't stop him

What if the current sentiment that is fueling the Trump campaign and supported the Tea Party and other hyper-conservative movements in America (as well as their counterparts on the left) is the result of the unresolved trauma of 9-11 and the 2008 recession (differentiating it from other recessions where you didn’t see your two neighbors across the street simultaneously lose their jobs and their homes)?  If we see the American public as individuals who were abused as children, we can understand why now many of them dream of a prince charming who will magically save them instead of looking at the reality around them that is saying “the trauma is over and we survived, albeit with some serious bumps and bruises, which in time and with a little innovation, can heal”.  Instead, we’re like the older teen who runs away from home to live with the 27-year-old “bad boy” who promises us the world, only to get us hooked on drugs (pre-Trump) and pulls us into a cycle of domestic violence (post-Trump). 

Lessons from Kohelet - A Sukkot shiur by Rabbi Sacks

On 26th September 2016, Rabbi Sacks delivered a shiur (Shiur (/'ʃiː.ər/, Hebrew: שיעור‎‎ [ʃiˈʔuʁ], pl. shiurim, שיעורים [ʃiʔuˈʁim]) is a lesson on any Torah topic, such as Gemara, Mishnah, halakha, Tanakh, etc. - Wikipedia) to officially launch the Koren Sacks Sukkot Mahzor (The Gross Family Edition). The video was recorded in Hampstead Garden Suburb Synagogue in London and the event was jointly sponsored by the United Synagogue and Koren Publishers Jerusalem. The sources used have been incorporated into the video.

Kippalive always put out awesome songs, but this one is on a whole other level. “We Are Home” is a remake of “500 Miles” by Hedy West.

Dr. Paul Farmer Is 'Surprised And Upset And Humbled' After Visit To Haiti

The most frightening line is "Resilience is not the same as survival."


Dr. Paul Farmer Is 'Surprised And Upset And Humbled' After Visit To Haiti

Musing #8

   

 Since losing his left hand during our first MI-6 adventure, Angus has had a conflictual relationship with his prosthesis that impacts everything in his life, from our sexual relationship to his work in the House of Lords.  This makes sense when you are raised in a world where perfection is accepted as standard and damage of any kind is, as best, minimized or, at worst, ignored – bad things simply don’t happen to the titled.  It isn’t as if anyone, either family or society, said this to him or he grew up with rejection from school mates due to a deformity.  And the prosthesis is so technically advanced, initially you wouldn’t realize it wasn’t his flesh and muscle unless you touched it or he tried to put on a button.  But the zeitgeist of perfection that secures the lies of white male superiority are hard to sustain when your husband has to help you tie your shoes.  Paralympic celebrations and cheery physio-therapy adverts be damned - somedays it’s just easier to succumb to depression’s entreaties.

Love Comes at the Strangest Moments, Pt 2

    Ciara returned from walking Velvel to find Angus sitting at the Churton Place, the London townhouse, kitchen counter slumped over a cold cup of bad tea dressed in mixed matched workout clothes.  “Slept with my brother again, eh?”  Velvel rounded Angus’s ankles, sniffed the man’s ass, nodded it’s head and pranced off to his crate.

    Angus gave the dog a frown to avoid eye contact with Ciara.  “What of it?” he snapped.

    “Well,” she retorted, taking the mug from his hands and dumping the contents in the nearby sink, “I hope at least my brother’s skills deserve a better morning after welcome than whatever you just put in that cup!”  She shook her head teasingly and retrieved an infuser and some herbs from a sealed container from the overhead cabinet.  She put the kettle on and turned around toward him to affectionately rest her hand on his shoulder.  But before her fingers got close to the top of his brown tee shirt, Angus nearly leaped out of his skin.

    “Aw!” He looked at her like someone afraid of being tickled.

    Initially, she looked at his withdrawn stance – as if he was a man with no skin – with incredulousness.  Then, although she didn’t have the extrasensory skills with humans like Deetz did, she had enough understanding of Angus to realize what had happened.  She squinted at him then said, “He touched you, touched you in a way you don’t know what to do with.  I’m right, aren’t I?”

Ask Rabbi Sacks RH FINAL Part 2

Look What You've Done to Me

My girl in Detroit rights sweet Torchwood fanfiction.  You can catch her stuff at A03 under the name "HippyChick1964".  Enjoy!

Chapter 1

Hope they never end this song

This could take us all night long

I looked at the moon and I felt blue

Then I looked again and I saw you

-          “Look What You’ve Done to Me” as sung by Boz Scaggs

“That’s what I love about Torchwood,” Ianto said sarcastically nodding his head, as he and the others dutifully followed Jack’s instructions to conduct the “retcon” clean-up of Gwen’s wedding reception.  “By day, chasing the scum of the universe.  Come the night, you’re the wedding fairy.”  While Owen swept up the last alien remnants and Toshiko prepared then place party favors before each guest – Jack’s idea of leaving them thinking that they’d passed out due to too much champagne – Ianto took care of the caterers and their crew.  Although it was a wedding, a typically festive occasion or, at least with some booze, a tolerable one, but Ianto Jones was irritated.

No, actually he was jealous.  Ianto’s eyes didn’t miss the way Jack looked at Gwen while they danced together.  Ianto’s ears, as he had very good hearing, heard how Jack convinced Gwen that she was making the best choice, to the sadness of both of them.  And Ianto’s heart did not miss Jack’s reluctance to let go of Gwen when Ianto got enough guts to cut in.  Knowing that you were someone’s second choice, after pizza, was painful, even if he wasn’t in love.

Musing #7865

Angus was right, of course - as usual.  “I’ve never seen such sadness and longing in someone’s face as I did you while you masturbated into that screen.”  He sighed deeply then sucked in cleansing air. Letting it out slowly, he continued, “Mate.  All you had to do was ask, tell me and I will be here, come like I have now.  I will always come, we can always be here for one another.  But, I need you to ask, tell me. I don’t have powers like you.  I can’t read your mind.  I need you to give me your thoughts.  I won’t assume them again.”  Have you ever noticed how the truth hurts more when it comes from someone you know loves you?

Okay, here’s the background.  I am a seminary student at a school in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, about 10 miles north of central Philadelphia, U.S.A.  Why is a Welsh Jew studying in America instead of Europe?  It is a long story, having to do with my sister Ciara’s connection to the leader of this small but powerful progressive Jewish denomination – one that stems from the idea that evolved from its spiritual leader, Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, that “the past has a vote, not a veto”.  Although Reconstructionists have roots in the States, its welcoming, egalitarian theological approach that believes "[i]nnovation need not entail the destruction of tradition; on the contrary, change is an important part of keeping a tradition alive, as it has been throughout Jewish history.  As the world changes faster, Judaism must be reconstructed ever more quickly if its wisdom is to continue to guide us."*  It spoke to me as I tried to return to faith, feeling blessed that I had found the love of my life – the 12th Earl of Glamorgan, Angus Reese.

Musing #45 – What is Angus thinking?

Angus looked for a late-night solace in the Morganwg estate’s kitchen.  A commoner would find looking for a snack there was like trying to find a healthy fixing in a mall food court.  But Angus grew up in Morganwg, knew the redesigned 19th Century cupboards and cold storage places like an archeologist in Giza.  And he was looking for something familiar, cozy, and comfortable because he was about to do something new, strange, and frightening.  He was about to marry his BFF - a man from his childhood - and Angus Reese, the 12th Earl of Glamorgan was not gay.

Ciara Mac Innes – the sister of his betrothed - was the familiar with the kitchen as well, as she was a ward to the Earl’s great aunt, Lady Nora.  Finding Ciara busily moving about in the kitchen offered Angus the familiar part – she was always there or at her cottage, Redrow, not far from the estate, just past the Druidic gardens where he and her brother played as children and talked into the late night as young teens.  “What has you up this late?” she asked, not startled by his presence.  “I was about to put the kettle on.” 

Understanding Antisemitism

So I end where I began. The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. Antisemitism is only secondarily about Jews. Primarily it is about the failure of groups to accept responsibility for their own failures, and to build their own future by their own endeavours. No society that has fostered antisemitism has ever sustained liberty or human rights or religious freedom. Every society driven by hate begins by seeking to destroy its enemies, but ends by destroying itself.

-Rabbi Johnathan Sacks

I spent a year in Israel, wanting to fulfill my progressive fantasy of peaceful co-existence with the Arab community.  An assault on me while I worked in a peace collaborative changed my mind.  A swastika painted on the wall of my home then on the door of my husband's office at the House of Lords eliminated whatever liberal views I once had.