Bodie Ghost Town, California

Bodie, California, is a ghost town located some distance beyond Mono Lake in the northern reaches of the state. As the final miles of the road to Bodie are unpaved, the difficulty of getting there — in a vehicle not built for such conditions, at least — can hardly be overstated.

As you might expect,

Meyerland Minyan 14th Annual Gala

Houston, Texas , March 2015:  Meyerland Minyan, an Orthodox Jewish Congregation,  celebrates the successful completion of its 14th year (“Bar Mitzvah plus one”) since founding.

Seen in the photo below is Rabbi Gidon Moskovitz (center), mara de’atra — rabbinic leader and decisor — of Meyerland Minyan, flanked by Gala honorees Abigail and Marshall Levit (left),

Bris

The turtle lives ‘twixt plated decks,
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.

                                             – Ogden Nash

The Torah tells us that the Jewish nation came down to Egypt as a nomadic clan numbering but a scant seventy souls.  

Houston Brit Milah

Brit Milah is Hebrew for “Covenant of Circumcision”. This underscores that regardless of the scientifically-documented benefits that inhere in circumcision from a medical point of view, Jews circumcise their eight-day-old infants primarily for one vital reason. I.e., circa 3300 years ago our ancestor Abraham was commanded by God that he and all succeeding generations must do so for no better reason than as a sign of God’s everlasting covenant with the Jewish people.

Circumcision

Write about a Jewish wedding, and the general reader will already have a decent working foundation for the discussion. Because the essential concept of marriage, and even certain features of the ceremony marking its inception, are arguably universal among almost all mainstream nations and cultures. What unique spin Judaism places on the wedding ceremony can be perceived without undo difficulty as an additional,

Birth, Fairly Expedited

The calm before the storm. But this mom is about to have her fourth child, and you can discern by the relative serenity on her face that she is an old hand at this. By now she knows exactly what to expect, and is not particularly alarmed.

The shadows in this photo have a certain Rembrandt-esque quality of their own.  

Children’s photography

A parent’s greatest joy is to see a beloved child grow and blossom. The real treasures of your family album are therefore your children’s photographs.

A photoshoot with Amalya is a true adventure, capturing the special moments of childhood that are indeed so ephemeral. With just a bit of magic in Amalya’s skilled hands you’ll get high-caliber professional pictures to delight in,

Labor and Delivery

In all of human experience, there is, arguably, no more transcendent experience than that of childbirth. It has even been said that merely witnessing the process of seeing a child come into the world is itself sufficient to make a person believe in God. Well, clearly the thing is not so cut and dried, since most atheists we know have children,

Hasidim of New York State – Part 2

Our previous blog covered some of the most important aspects of Hasidism’s historical origins, with emphasis on the contributions of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Hasidic movement.  Here we turn to some of the specific practices of the Hasidim.

All Hasidim place exceptional emphasis on the family unit, and —

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