BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

BEYOND THE THREE WEEKS The month of Av brings with it forgiveness similar to the experience of Yom Kippur. By Michael Strassfeld At first glance, this part of the festival cycle seems out of step with the cycle of our personal lives. For most of us, summer is a time of ease and enjoyment of the outdoors. The natural cycle is marked by the continued growth of spring plantings. But our history, with its mythic dimensions, forcefully reminds us that there can be another kind of summer, one whose heat is a consuming furnace rather than beneficent warmth. Anyone who has spent a summer in Israel can more easily understand how the Three Weeks is in fact in consonance with the natural cycle. There the afternoon sun seems to bleach all the color from the landscape. Movement slows or comes to a halt in the afternoon--for even if the sun is no hotter than in the United States, it seems to beat down unrelentingly on the land's inhabitants. One can easily become parched and debilitated j...

Summer of 2003 saw myself and my children finally moving into a house and out of the personal and ultimately, spiritual entrapment I found us in. I moved away from a marriage that wasn't working and was, in fact, harming me no matter how hard I tried to repair it. I finally dealt with the facts that I had been working on the relationship alone far too long. I moved back towards a solitary sort of existence, with only my children to break my emotional numbness. I was half-alive and half-dead and making bad choices. Things were too broken. My ability to feel was cross-circuited, my trust was shattered, my peace of mind gone, my self-esteem had been shredded; all too far gone by the damage of a psychopath for me to simply repair. I couldn't start over but I had to salvage what I could and go forward. Not forgetting but rebuilding. The purchase was a brick row house built in 1933 that needed a lot of TLC. When the money allowed I embarked on making it over. And in the pro...

The Tree of Life By Boruch Cohen With a name like "The Life of Sarah," this week's Torah portion sounds like a promising biography. Too bad she dies in the second verse. One of the fundamentals of our faith is that the Jewish way of life is everlasting. This is why the doing of good deeds is compared to planting a seed. When a seed is planted, it disintegrates in the ground, losing its puny identity to the nourishing soil and creative potential of mother earth. A seedling sprouts, which will one day grow into a tall tree. In time, the tree will bear fruit, and seeds, which themselves might become an orchard, and ultimately, a vast forest. Likewise, a good deed takes root and sprouts in a nourishing eternity of good deeds and Jewish values. These deeds and values give life to ourselves and our offspring, that we too might one day grow into tall fruitful trees; that our fruits might one day become orchards. That's why the Torah is called the "Tree of Life." Th...

CLICK HERE FOR THE TEMPLE OF OBAMA! Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple. Watch Charlie Gibson, Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos at the Democratic Convention TONIGHT at 10 p.m. ET on ABC The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos' National Football League team plays. Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington's Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party's nomination for president. He will stride out to a raised platform to a podium that can be raised from beneath the floor. The show should provide a striking image for the millions of Americans watching on television as Obama delivers a speech accepting the Democratic presidentia...