The Marathon and the Mikveh

by Rabbi Danielle Eskow for MayyimHayyim Blog

As a monthly mikveh goer, I had always appreciated the cleansing experience of immersing in the water. The routine enhanced my own life, as well as my marriage. As a rabbi, I had witnessed the powerful experience of a new Jewish person immersing in the mikveh upon conversion. I had not yet experienced, either personally or professionally the powerful healing that the mikveh could bring. This all changed when the Boston Marathon Bombings occurred on April 15th 2013.

My husband ran the marathon that year and finished four minutes before the bombs went off.  I had been standing in front of where the first bomb went off.  For twenty minutes I could not find him, the longest twenty minutes of my life. That night when we finally were able to go home, I told my husband, “this was one of the hardest and worst days of my life.” Little did I know that the days that followed would be much worse.

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It’s 1933: Calling All Jewish Doctors to Istanbul!

By Leah Falk for Jewniverse

In the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire was known as the “sick man of Europe.” When, after World War I, Kemal Mustafa Ataturk helped inaugurate the republic of Turkey, becoming its first president, one could say he overturned this reputation by the most literal means possible: by inviting 300 some German Jewish doctors, on the eve of World War II, to take refuge in Turkey.

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Q&A: ‘Mad Men’ Creator Matthew Weiner Talks LA Jews and the American Dream

By David Samuels for Tablet Magazine

If I could meet any Jew for a dry martini at the Carlyle Hotel, I would choose Matthew Weiner, the creator of the most influential iteration of the mid-century American story and one of the great show runners in the new golden age of television. So, I felt lucky when I got the chance to do just that a few weeks ago. But we met at 11 a.m., so the only drink available was a Bloody Mary. Still game, I ordered one for myself (vodka; extra horseradish), but Weiner just asked for a coffee with milk.

It wasn’t exactly how I imagined it, but we settled in to our comfortable surroundings and talked about the Jews for almost two hours, until he went off to have a more perfectly set-designed lunch, probably at the Rainbow Room or some other suitably mid-century modern midtown location. The version of our conversation that follows has been subjected to the moderate degree of editing appropriate to a publication that is read both by Jews and by the people who love them.

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Oliver Sacks on Facing Death

Will my last days be filled with gratitude or regret?

by Eliana Cline for aish.com

My tears surprise me. I am reading Oliver Sacks’ New York Times op-ed where he shares that his cancer has metastasized to his liver and in a few months he will leave this world.

These are not the tears I cry when I hear of a young mother stricken with incurable cancer, or a teenager plucked from this world tragically before his prime. In his 81 years Sacks has achieved dazzling success and acclaim as both a scientist and an author.  His ground-breaking discoveries in the field of neuro-science have transformed modern medicine's understanding of the brain. Hailed by The New York Times as “the poet laureate of medicine,” Sacks will leave the world of both medicine and literature infinitely richer.

It is the fullness of his life which moves me. It is specifically the fact that he stands facing death with not a whisper of regret in his words. Quite the opposite, his words are dripping with fulfilment and gratitude. Till his last day, he chooses to embrace the world: “It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me,” he writes. “I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can.”

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