Author: Howard Feldman

She looked like a perfectly lovely person

She looked like a perfectly lovely person. Wearing a long flower dress with a wide brimmedstraw hat that had a matching pink band around it, she walked up to me and wished me aShabbat shalom. “Are you by any chance Howard Feldman?” she inquired. When Iconfirmed that indeed I was, she uttered an expression that

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Potatoes & Perspective

There are some advantages to war, famine and to illness. Limited though they are, they generally, at the very least, force us to consider what is and what is not important.

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Cancel or at least postpone Purim

I am not sure that we need Purim this year. I felt the same about the High Holidays back in  2020 when we were much younger, thinner and fitter. But not really that fit.

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The Villain and the Victim

Whereas there might be many faces to Jacob Zuma, most of them can be condensed into two primary themes. He is either the villain, ominous and threatening and openly defiant of the law, of the NEC, and of the wishes of the country.

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Sputnik V

In the same way that within a short year, many of us became fluent in conversational virology, it appears as though we are now attaining a high level of knowledge on the complex nuances of immunology that until recently was known only to researchers, specialist and anti-vaxers. Most of us are able to list the

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Give Us The Tools

Winston Churchill’s radio broadcast of the 9th February 1941 was a particularly rousing affair. In part designed for a local audience, and in part an international plea for desperately needed assistance.

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The Falling Optimist

The story is told of an optimist who falls from the top of the Empire State Building. On the way down, around the 30th floor, someone leans out the window and shouts, “Hey, how is it going?” The optimist, still falling, looks at him, gives him a big thumbs up and a confident smile, and screams back, “Yeah! So far so good!” 

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But He Is Good for Israel

The happenings on Capitol Hill left most sane people winded. And whereas many were quick to blame 2021 for letting us down so spectacularly and so early into the year, it clearly had little to do with the calendar and everything to do with the former president of the United States Donald Trump.

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Airborne Anxiety

January 2021 and it feels like anxiety is airborne. Say what we want about the transmissibility of the new variant of COVID, it is the disquiet and the worry that have found their way into every corner of our lives.

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Resolutions for 2021

Covid be dammed, I fully intend making a bunch of new year resolutions that I have no intention of keeping. The pandemic can rob us of our health, our economic security, ability to travel and of our freedom, but it can never take away our ability to delude ourselves. That is and will always be

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The Saturday’s Dimming Star

Every Saturday on my return from the synagogue I collect the Saturday Star from where it lies at the end of the driveway. I walk into my home scanning the headlines and checking which articles are worth reading. I am often amazed at the choice of lead-story but mostly I find it somewhat amusing more

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