Parashat Shemini: Hush, and Love Your Children

April 21, 2012 Irwin Keller

I flew to Pittsburgh and back in the last 55 hours. As always, I did the Mensa quiz on the plane and then as always, when I couldn't figure out the answer to question 6, dismissed the whole Mensa business as the basest sort of snobbism.

Shabbat Zachor - Forgetting, Remembering, Acting

March 2, 2012 Irwin Keller

Trying to forget someone puts you in very powerful and intimate relationship with them. Think of the friend or relative you no longer speak to. Think of how much more psychic space that person takes up in your life than many of the people with whom you're on fine terms!

Parashat Vayechi: The End of Myth

January 6, 2012 Irwin Keller

n fact, Joseph is the turning point. While his ancestors' names had obvious mythic resonance, his own name, Yosef, means "add-on." He's the annex, the bridge to the next thing. And while Jacob dies at the fantastically old age of 147, his son Joseph dies this week at 110 - a rare but not mythical age, as was proven by our friend Elsie Rich, who also died this week, also at 110. Jacob belongs to the world of myth. Joseph, like Elsie, belongs to us.

Chayei Sarah - The (3) Lives of Sarah

November 18, 2011 Irwin Keller

I remember taking out sheets of ledger paper and beginning to draw a tree as she dictated the names of her many aunts and uncles and her scores of American cousins, all of whom she knew, all of whose children and grandchildren she knew, all of whom she talked to regularly on the phone. I loved making the tree and recording the names, but mostly I loved this act of transmission. My willingness gave her pleasure, and we two were conspirators in a secret plot for posterity.

Simchat Torah: Back to Zero

October 22, 2011 Irwin Keller

God inhales Moshe's soul with a kiss, and the next thing we know, there is God exhaling ripples onto the surface of the deep. But there is a moment in between. A moment of returning to zero, like a movie actor between takes, like a cross-fade through black. Moshe returns to that Oneness, that same emptiness, that preceded everything. And we go with him. And then bang - Big Bang - we're off and running again. B'reishit...