Sensible Sacredness
Yesterday was a day at the San Diego zoo. The highlights were the bears, the Pandas and Koalas (marsupials misnamed as bears). All were fast asleep (the Koalas sleep up to 20 hours a day) except for 3 year old Panda Xiao Liwu who was busy eating one bamboo shoot after another. He was mesmerizing, […]
Q is for Question
It has been my custom to reward good questions my children ask with $5. Over the years it has cost me a bundle and I am now gearing up for the next round with Eva and Isabel turning four. For my older children, the monetary reward became quite secondary to the desire to have asked […]
Strange Fruit
There is a confederacy growing in the United States whose unified strength will not only lower that flag but have it removed from South Carolina and other southern states—the flag being the emblem of prejudicial states of mind. Hate is a very active energy. If the new confederacy is to overcome hatred it must remain […]
Telling Stories
Jonesborough, Tennessee is a sleepy bed & breakfast town that every year hosts an international festival of story tellers. People sit under huge tents and in a revivalist fashion do what small children the world over enjoy—a good story. I have a story from Jonesborough—not one I heard, one that I experienced. It has […]
Dear KE Community
Dear KE Community: KE celebrated its 10th anniversary at our annual fundraiser Expect the Unexpected on May 5th at the Space Gallery. We keep counting UP as we become a more sustainable and vibrant organization. Here are some Unexpected highlights from this year and important announcements for the coming year. • KE […]
Body Worn Cameras
Those familiar with Malcom Gladwell’s book Tipping Point might recognize that technological advances are now tipping the scales of justice. It is a matter of time before every police officer in this country will be outfitted with a body camera. Statistics do not tell a personal story but they do tell a collective story. […]
The Depth of Forgiveness
Forgiveness is really nothing more than an act of self-healing and self-empowerment. I call it a miracle medicine. It is free, it works and has no side effects. The day I forgave the Nazis, privately I forgave my parents whom I hated all my life for not having saved me from Auschwitz. Children expect […]
Dayenu — The Present is Enough
I recently received a message from my computer, which can be very courteous if it is in a good mood, alerting me that memory was almost full. Any one of your external brains may signal you about reaching critical capacity—too many photos, texts, emails etc. Can you imagine if you periodically received a message from […]
Wishes for a Meaningful Pass Over
Dear KE Community: A few years ago a group of hip Jews wrote and published The New American Haggadah for Passover. For me there was not that much new about it, and beside it being in English, I was not sure what made it American. So this year I created a new Haggadah based […]
A Fork in the Road
I am, and I suspect many of you are as well, at a crossroads. This intersection though is ever present—where past meets future at the juncture of now. It happens every minute and in the broader sweep of decades and generations. Technology is a wondrous marker of these transitions that has us contemplate: “Do I […]