| Jerusalem Sunset - 18 March 2025 |
| Avi and I are coming to the end of two months in Jerusalem. Avi has been volunteering as a pathologist at Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital, and I have been spending mornings studying Talmud at the Conservative Yeshiva. Besides studying Talmud, I read a collection of short stories in Hebrew, and worked on improving my speaking ability. This year I also took lessons in spoken Arabic, an addition to my yearly program that I liked very much. In college and graduate school I learned to . . .(more) |
| Another Generation - 18 February 2025 |
| In 1980 Bev and I, together with a small group of friends who were dissatisfied with the alternatives in West Rogers Park where we lived, formed a new minyan (prayer group). It was lay-led, and men and women took equal parts in conducting the services. That group, which is now called Mah Tovu, still exists and is still my religious home. Very early on, Bev designed a beautiful cover for our Torah reading table. It is embroidered with the design of a tree, and all around the edg . . .(more) |
| The Mesila (the Jerusalem rail trail) - 28 January 2025 |
| The old Jaffa to Jerusalem railway dates to when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire. It was built by a multi-ethnic consortium in the 1880’s and started service in August 1891. The route is very scenic. From Tel Aviv it crosses the coastal plain as far as Beit Shemesh, and then enters a wadi which winds up through the hills to Jerusalem. On my first trip to Israel in 1974 I took the train up to Jerusalem, and then in 1990 when our whole family spent the summer here, I . . .(more) |
| Catalunya 2025 - 17 January 2025 |
| I’m getting towards the end of my annual visit to Barcelona. This year it turned out that Reva, Nathaniel, and Abe had planned a visit to Barcelona, without even knowing that I would be here too. So we have been having a great time hanging out, and I’ve been showing them some of my favorite places. As always, I’ve also visited with some of my Catalan friends: I went to Sabadell to visit with Josep and Maria Teresa, to Manresa to see Lou and Rosa, and saw Carles Múrcia, N . . .(more) |
| My Seventieth Birthday - 19 November 2024 |
| My seventieth birthday was earlier this month. Avi and I took the train from Chicago to DC. We got a sleeping car compartment on a train that left at dinner time and arrived the next day at noon. When we woke in the morning we were in the midst of beautiful mountain scenery that continued much of the way to Washington. Once there we spent a couple of days with Renana and Deena and her family, and then on Saturday and Sunday Tamar, Jesse, Adira, Reva, Joe and Jenny all arr . . .(more) |
| Fall in Chicago - 3 November 2024 |
| The City of Chicago is full of trees, and when they are in leaf, the parks and streets are verdant. Every autumn, before the leaves fall, they turn bright, vivid colors, that are impressive even to my color-blind eyes. Many people plan trips to forested areas to see the fall leaves, but Chicago’s motto is Urbs in Horto - City in a Garden, and here you have only to walk down your own street to be struck by the beauty of this season. The colors of the fall sunsets are also especially impress . . .(more) |
| A Village in France - 12 September 2024 |
| Avi and I are spending a week and a half in Villeréal, a little village in South West France. This particular village is a bastide, which is a kind of settlement that dates from the middle ages. In those days, if a nobleman’s frontiers were lightly populated, he would sometimes try to strengthen them by creating new fortified towns. He would provide inducements for people to come and settle there. These new towns were constructed on a standard plan: they had a grid layout . . .(more) |
| Semantic Bleaching - 22 August 2024 |
| Yesterday morning I went to a coffee shop in Andersonville. An abundantly-pierced young person took my order for a latte, and asked if I wanted anything else. I asked for a peach danish, to which they responded “amazing.” They asked me for my name so they could call me when the latte was ready. When I told them my name was Sam, they surprised me by again saying “Amazing”. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to have my name called amazing. The profuse use of t . . .(more) |
| Back to August 2 - 31 July 2024 |
| August 2 was the birthday of my father, born in 1917, and my wife, born in 1953. They are now both long gone from this world, but they are still remembered and loved. Making my father proud of me was always one of my most important goals. Even now, so many years after his death, it still seems a worthy aim, and still shapes my life. |
| Pictures from Galle - 16 July 2024 |
| Here are a few pictures from my annual stay in Galle. I make no apologies for once again including shots of the lighthouse and the Dutch gate. They are so photogenic it's impossible to leave them out! |
| Greetings from Kandy - 10 July 2024 |
| I’m just ending my yearly stay in Kandy, the biggest place in the highlands of Sri Lanka. This city was the capitol of the last kings of Sri Lanka. It is on the shores of a beautiful artificial lake and is the site of the Temple of the Tooth, the most important Buddhist site in the country, and a center of pilgrimage. Religion here is quite syncretistic, and right alongside the Temple of the Tooth there are shrines to four pagan gods. They are: * Nātha - He . . .(more) |
| Since 2014 - 23 June 2024 |
| Since 2014 I and my daughters and their families have assembled for a summer weekend together. Finding a time when we are all free gets harder every year, as everyone’s schedule becomes more complicated and crowded, but somehow we manage. This year the house we had rented for the last few years was not available, but we found another not far away in the beautiful hills of southern Pennsylvania. The house was built of stone in the late eighteenth century, and is next door to a working Amish . . .(more) |
| Sam Fox - 4 June 2024 |
| No, not me, my grandfather, for whom I am named. Shlome Fuksman (later known as Samuel Lemuel Fox) was born on July 12, 1875 in Sudche, Minsk Gubernia, Russia. His father was Jacob Samuel Fuksman, and his mother was named Tsirel Cott. The family later moved to Lyubeshiv, a larger town a few miles away. These places are now in Ukraine, very close to the border with Belarus. Lyubeshiv is even now quite small, and Sudche is little more than a crossroads. I don’t know what the . . .(more) |
| From Jerusalem to Chicago - 6 May 2024 |
| All last winter near the holy height the pale blue skies blew thin and chaste. Their clouds were refugees in flight, that pressed each other in their haste, and colliding, merged and darkened right above us, spilling droplets as they raced. They gave the stones a slippery sheen and turned the tan soil startling green. Now here the Midwest spring has come with still clouds stretched across the sky. Their spect . . .(more) |
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