| Back to August 2 - 3 August 2026 |
| Yesterday was the birthday of both Bev and my Father. Bev would have just turned 73. The picture of her with me was taken at the Frieds’ house in Tustin around 1985. It’s hard to believe that we were ever that young. The picture of Dad with his sisters Ethel, Sunny, and Ruth, and his brother Abe was taken at Reva’s bat mitzvah in DeKalb. We miss them every day, and especially on occasions of family joy. But those times are also opportunities for us to stop, think of t . . .(more) |
| The Isle of Man - 26 July 2026 |
| My campaign of visits to beautiful islands continues. Avi and I are now in the midst of a week’s visit to the Isle of Man, which is in the middle of the Irish Sea, between Great Britain and Ireland. The island is a Crown Dependency, meaning that its sovereign is King Charles, but it has its own parliament, and laws enacted in Westminster do not apply here. The island is not too large (just over 200 square miles) and the population is just eighty-five thousand. . . .(more) |
| The Dining Car - 16 June 2026 |
| Two weeks ago Avi and I took the train from Chicago to Seattle to visit Joe and Jenny. The train is called The Empire Builder, and the ride all the way to Seattle lasts almost two whole days, so we booked a bedroom in a sleeping car. If you get a sleeping car berth, it includes meals in the dining car. Since space in the car is limited, if your party is less than four people you are seated with other random passengers. So over the course of the two days we dined with a wonderful variety of p . . .(more) |
| Family Tradition - 21 May 2026 |
| My father, Arnold Fox, was born in the Bronx in 1917, the seventh of eight children of Sam and Jenny (Reva Yentel) Fox. My grandmother was pious, but my grandfather was not. He discouraged his children from being involved in religion, and my father’s older siblings took little interest in Judaism. But in 1924, when my father was only seven years old, his father died, and perhaps because of this, though his worldview was as secular as that of his siblings, he came to enjoy being involved in t . . .(more) |
| From Jerusalem to Chicago via Prague - 18 March 2026 |
| We arrived back in Chicago on Monday. I had been away for three months, and Avi for just two weeks less. Because of the war, the last couple of weeks in Israel were stressful. Jerusalem was comparatively lightly targeted, but still, there were alarms several times a day, and since we had no safe room in our apartment we had to run to the nearby shelter. In addition, this was all happening almost at the end of our stay, and our original tickets home were canceled. Finding a ne . . .(more) |
| Alarms and Diversions - 1 March 2026 |
| Yesterday morning the war began. There is a system of sirens and phone applications here that warn you if missiles are incoming. We started hearing alarms occasionally yesterday morning before we left for the synagogue. Services were interrupted a couple of times by sirens, and we were all down in the shelter in the basement of the building for much of the Torah reading. The alarms continued off and on all yesterday afternoon and evening and into this morning, but they seem to be less frequ . . .(more) |
| Up and Down in Jerusalem - 23 January 2026 |
| In this part of the world there is not much rain, and the little there is falls only during the winter months. This year the rains started late, but by early January they were well under way, with strong winds, loud thunderstorms, and day after day of heavy downpours. The leaden skies of rainy days are not so photogenic, but when towering clouds mix with pure blue the effect is beautiful and you can’t help looking up to admire it. But then you need to look dow . . .(more) |
| Naxos - 31 December 2025 |
| Avi and I just got back from three days on Naxos, the largest and most fertile of a group of Greek islands called the Cyclades. Naxos has been inhabited for thousands of years, and was a center of a Bronze Age culture. Today the island has important marble quarries and a vibrant agricultural sector. The center of the island is an undulating plain ringed by mountains which catch the rain and keep the land lush and green. There are groves of beautiful old olive trees. Flocks of sheep and goats . . .(more) |
| The National Portrait Gallery - 21 December 2025 |
The National Portrait Gallery in Washington is one of my favorite places in our capital, and the museum with the same name in London is just as beautiful and engaging. It was the first place I went when I arrived in the city a week ago, and, as always, there were new things to see. Here are just of few of the portraits that caught my eye this time.
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| King and Constitution - 30 October 2025 |
| My mother took me to Europe when I was nine years old, and we spent most of our time in England. Every day we visited castles and cathedrals, and I loved them, though I didn't have an overall context to put them in. But then a few years later I found an introduction to the history of England in our Junior High School library, and reading that (more than once, I think) helped me understand how all those things that I had seen fit together. I still especially enjoy British history, and so when . . .(more) |
| Hagar and Ishmael - 28 September 2025 |
| Every year in the fall we start reading the Torah in the synagogue, and we go on reading one section every week until we have finished it, just in time to start over at the same time the next year. In addition to this annual cycle, on our (many!) holidays we do special, out-of-sequence readings. Generally these are sections of the Torah that discuss the holiday concerned, so it’s clear why they were chosen. But on Rosh HaShana, the New Year, the reading is a bit surprising a . . .(more) |
| Coming Home from Serendib - 24 August 2025 |
| Tonight I head home after almost a month here in Sri Lanka. As always, I have learned a lot, though I have barely scratched the surface of what there is to know about this beautiful place. The pictures here show a few different sides of the experience of being here. The first one is from a courtyard near the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy. Next is a very large butterfly that was hovering over the flowers near my room. Third is a picture from a school group that came to see a tra . . .(more) |
| Kandy Wildlife - 11 August 2025 |
| I arrived yesterday in Kandy, the main city in the highlands of Sri Lanka. Long after the rest of the island was controlled by European countries, an independent kingdom held on up here. The last king of Kandy, Sri Vikrama Rajasinha, built a beautiful lake beside his palace, and it remains one of the jewels of the city. On the two mile long walk around the lake you typically see lots of birds, and I wasn’t disappointed today, but there were some less usual animals as well. . . .(more) |
| The Years Pass More Quickly - 2 August 2025 which was the birthday of both my father and my wife |
| It’s truly hard to believe that it’s already August second again. On this day in 1917 my father, Arnold Fox, was born in the Bronx. On the same day of the year in 1953, Beverly Fried was born in Dayton, Ohio. The picture I have attached here shows us together (with Mom, Reva, Deena, and Tamar) in London in the summer of 1985. My father was two years younger than I am now, and Bev was a youthful and beautiful thirty-two. I always miss them both, but seeing our family toget . . .(more) |
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