THE BRAVE NEW LAND

This is a story that starts about six months ago, when Adele and I decided that it was very important for us to become observant as Jews (Orthodox for those of you that need a translation). It wasn’t an easy decision and I spent some time looking out over Har Ha Ba’it (The Temple Mount) with tears of both pain and joy finding there way to the backs of my hands as I wiped them away. Some of the stories since have been chronicled in this pulp of both darkness and light, mazal and i.p. addresses, and adventures both in reality and in the mind, but today was a new day, or at least it started that way. To begin this process of recounting footsteps and feelings, I need to back up to last week when Adele came home from Jerusalem after an evidently, particularly grueling descent (or assent as the case may be) into the land and headspace of datti-land (religious-land). She has a packed schedule in J-Town and all of her clients are the kind of Jews that you think of when you think ‘Orthodox Jew’...

A couple of blogs ago I put a reference to the Hebrew phrase, mazaltov, right smack in the middle of it and then just left it as a question. The question had something to do with how it’s translation to ‘constellation’ or ‘luck’ wasn’t really very accurate or even a Jewish idea. Well, my friend Louis helped me understand this one a little bit. Here is a link that he sent me as well that actually starts with a similar question; Mozal Tov??? So, now I think I got it a little more figured out. To make it a little simpler, think of the number 3. You see, with three legs a table will stand up. It doesn’t need 4 and it won’t work with only 2. A table is a great analogy because it can stand for so many things. A table is a place where just about everything takes place. A dinning table is where we nourish ourselves both from the physical and the spiritual standpoints. A desk is a table where we get our work done, or in my case, a workbench as well. So I think you get the idea… Let’s call the...