Babi Yar

 

 

 

A German Einsatzgruppen soldier talks to two unidentified women at the top of the Babi Yar ravine

 

The 80th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre is marked this week. 

The event, in which Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators murdered 33,771 Jews, took place on Sept. 29-30, 1941, on the eve of Yom Kippur. 

As if that atrocity was not bad enough, for many years Nazis and then Soviets added insult to injury by actively trying to destroy any evidence that could attest to these horrors.

Jackie Mason

 

 

"L'Chayim" (2013)

Simchat Torah

 

 

Reuven Rubin, "Simchat Torah" (1966)

 

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

"Ozymandias", P. B. Shelley

 

Kotel

 

"At the Wailing Wall, June 7, 1967: Soldiers Reciting Kaddish; 

Rabbi Shlomo Goren Saying a Prayer for the Fallen; The Sound of the Shofar. Narrated by Teddy Kollek" 

 

Israel

 

 

 

"A Blind Child discovering Israel with his Fingers", David Rubinger (1960)

Vida

 

 

 

A sperm whale amid sargassum weed off Roseau, Dominica 

 

Leonard Cohen

 

 

"Lover, Lover, Lover"

 

"I asked my father,
I said, "Father change my name."
The one I'm using now it's covered up
with fear and filth and cowardice and shame.

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me,
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me.

He said, "I locked you in this body,
I meant it as a kind of trial.
You can use it for a weapon,
or to make some woman smile."

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me,
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me.

"Then let me start again," I cried,
"please let me start again,
I want a face that's fair this time,
I want a spirit that is calm."

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me,
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me.

"I never never turned aside," he said,
"I never walked away.
It was you who built the temple,
it was you who covered up my face."

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me,
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me.

And may the spirit of this song,
may it rise up pure and free.
May it be a shield for you,
a shield against the enemy.

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me,
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me.

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me,
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me."

Pidion Haben

 

 

 

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women adorn 30-day-old Yossef Tabersky, the great grandchild of the chief rabbi of the Lelov Hassidic dynasty, 

during the "Pidyon Haben" ceremony in Beit Shemesh, Israel (September 16, 2021)

Sukkot

 

 

 

 Rabbi Sacks zt"l on the meaning of Sukkot and the Sukkah

 

Amsterdão

 

 

 

Holland's King Willem-Alexander, right, officially unveiling a new monument in the heart of Amsterdam's

 historic Jewish Quarter honoring the 102,000 Dutch victims of the Holocaust (September 19, 2021)

 

Remorsos

 

 

 

"Broken Tablets: How to Handle Our Regrets", Rabbi David Wolpe 

 

Yom Kippur

 

Vida

 

 

 

A black-chinned male hummingbird (Archilochus alexandri) hovers in the sky 

while feeding on the nectar of flowers in Carabobo state, Venezuela

High Holidays

 

 

 

High Holiday services for American Jewish soldiers near Aachen, Germany, 

just miles from the Nazi frontline (1944)

 

Amalek

 

 

 

"The Crown of Kingship on Rosh Hashanah", Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik

 

9/11

 

 

Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities. 

Saul Bellow

 

Alemanha

 

 

An interior view of Potsdam, Germany's new synagogue

 

Rosh Hashanah

 

Vida

 

 

 

An Altinote ozoneme butterfly is pictured in Jardin, Colombia

We must laugh and we must sing for we are blessed by everything.

W.B. Yeats

Saul Leiter

 

 

 

Newspaper Kiosk, New York City (1955)