This past Friday, Esther Ticktin died at the age of 91. One year ago, her husband, Rabbi Max Ticktin, died at age 94. For three generations of Hillel rabbis, university students and members of the havurah, or fellowship, movement, the Ticktins were a guide to Jewish learning, Jewish life and the Jewish engagement with healing…
One day in mid-June, I borrowed a car from my dad and drove my daughter, now 18, to the Jewish Reform Movement’s Camp Eisner in the Berkshires where she is spending the summer as a lifeguard/counselor, having spent all but one of the past eight summers there as a camper. Afterward, I continued on towards…
Forty years ago, I was still living in Washington DC and was still a member of Fabrangen — one of the earliest havurah-style minyanim –– when I noticed something odd that one of our members was doing when the Torah scroll was joyfully carried around the community on Shabbat morning. The member was Rabbi Max…
When memory bursts, it’s like a dam opening, flooding the present. Still, I did not expect it to happen in a late-night taxi as I headed home from work, reading a New York Times story on my smartphone. On its face, the story before me had nothing to do with my own history: It was…
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