I live in one of the most bike friendly cities in the world: Portland, Oregon. I could look up the numbers, but suffice it to say that there’s a sizable population here that relies on two wheels as their primary — sometimes their exclusive — form of travel. Even Mike bikes to work every so often: 16 miles each way, with lots of hills.
I’ve been paying a good amount of lip service to biking, but haven’t too often pedaled my own talk, for a variety of reasons. That changed on Sunday, when I made two round trips — up and [...]
Mike and I visited Sauvie Island Organics Farm this afternoon. This farm — located 15 miles from downtown Portland, Oregon, on farm-friendly Sauvie Island — provides a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program that feeds more than 500 people locally each season.
Other than attending a pumpkin festival in late October on a family homestead in Hillsboro, Oregon, I’d not visited a working farm before, and it got me to wondering how many people really know where their food comes from.
We didn’t just show up randomly as Sauvie Island Organics. They were hosting an event alongside Portland’s Tuv Ha’aretz, an affiliate of [...]
Today’s blog post comes again from my meeting with the Bet Din on May 2. I was asked about prayer by my three judges, and I had done some preparation around Kiddush Levana — a Jewish prayer ritual that is performed during the waxing phase of the moon.
So, given that we’re now at the beginning of another lunar cycle, here goes….
Kiddush Levana is the ritual sanctification of the waxing moon to be performed outdoors when the light of the moon reappears in the sky following the New Moon, or any time up until the Full Moon. In a place like [...]
Part of my conversion to Judaism involved choosing a Hebrew name, which for me at least wasn’t a simple of quick process. I’ve had to choose names for myself in the past, and it’s never been easy — just ask my fellow belly dancers, who grew increasingly frustrated with each new name change I made. I think I started out as Artemis (for one performance only), used Melek for a while, toyed with Marina Al Meleki (or something like that) before finally settling on Jenneva.
(Assuming, of course, that I don’t choose an entirely new name when I start dancing [...]
In preparation for going before the Bet Din last week, I prepared myself to answer questions on four topics: Torah, holidays, prayer and Jewish History. I’d already agreed to specific questions on each of these topics ahead of time, and the night before the Bet Din, I wrote my responses to each of these questions in a kind of essay format to help gather my thoughts.
I’d promised to share these answers here on my blog, and this is the first of four installments on my Bet Din topics.
Question: What does the holiday of Shabbat mean to you? How do [...]
The “Golden Rule” — treat others the way you want to be treated — is a common thread which in one form or another weaves itself into many (if not all) religions of the world. Buddhism. Judaism. Christianity. Islam. Wicca. Native American traditions. And the list goes on.
Granted, many of us suck at truly living by and implementing this very basic guidance, as evidenced by everything from tabloid headlines (would you want someone hounding and making up stuff about you?) to international politics and foreign policy.
But there’s another key player here that deserves at least the attempt of respect and [...]
It’s almost Easter…. Do you know where you eggs come from?
Eggs are a traditional symbol of new life. In Pagan traditions, the egg is often associated with the Goddess — also sometimes known as Mother Earth — and it is believed that the egg came to be connected with Easter due to the close proximity of the Christian holiday with the Pagan festival of Ostara, celebrated at the time of the Vernal Equinox. The history of exchanging dyed or painted eggs dates back to ancient times.
Judaism is observing Passover — or Pesach — this week, and the egg has a [...]
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Recent articles
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