To my five-year-old self, the old Temple Emanu-El in Wichita was the largest building that I remember. Light yellow brick lined the outside and its big square skylight was propped up by framed glass windows. The sanctuary, as seemingly ancient and musty as the Torah scrolls evoked no sense of awe or holiness to me. I didn’t choose to go to Temple, and the thought of not going never crossed my mind.

I decided to do an experiment. I wanted to see what the common wisdom would say to loss and mourning. So this morning, I asked the artificial intelligence ChatGPT to write a generic eulogy to offer at a funeral for “loss of a loving wife.”

Bulls, cows and dogs roam the streets in Varanasi, India, on the bend in the Ganges where the river flows northward towards it source in the Himalayas before it turns east again crawling toward the Bay of Bengal. Animals lie where they want and consume some small portion of Varanasi’s prolific garbage. Some people might adopt a particular cow. They might give her some hay. Then she will come to them to be milked. Besides the water from the Ganges River, milk is the holiest liquid. Garbage in, milk out. What a miraculous world!

This was the announcement of coming attractions at the end of the Shabbat service: “Join us for our Pride Shabbat in June when we celebrate the LGBTQ members of our community. And then we will celebrate Juneteenth and acknowledge the racial diversity in our synagogue.”

Huh? My head went spinning.

I had one of those precious Happy Zaydee (my preferred grandfather moniker) conversations with Eliana, my seven-year-old granddaughter.

She was reading The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, from the canon of American childhood literature. The book offers a reflection on the passages in life. You probably know the story. The young boy loves his tree. The tree freely offers its branches for climbing and its fruit for eating. The tree is happy to give. And then, kind of Puff the Magic Dragon like, the boy becomes distracted by other things. He stops coming around. Nu? Life happens and none of us remain children. A bit sad. A bit wistful. But who would really want life to stand still?

Did you ever have an encounter with an idiot that keeps you laughing twenty years later?

If you mention to my children the not well worn phrase, “Zagreb, Idiots” they will bust their gut.

In 2003, we traveled to Europe during my sabbatical. Aaron had finished his freshman year of college. Alana was studying for her SATs. Benjamin was anticipating his Bar Mitzvah the following summer. We booked an overnight train from Dubrovnik to Budapest, groggily changing trains in Zagreb. We had half an hour to lurch from one train to the other, with a mandatory detour to the Zagreb ticket office. “In Zagreb you MUST get your ongoing ticket voucher to Hungary stamped,” our travel agent warned us.

A Remarkable Jewish Community in the Most Unlikely of Places

El Salvador March 18-21, 2013

In February, Rabbi Steven Peskind called me, “Jonathan, a few months ago you mentioned to me that if I needed any help in El Salvador that you might join me. Are you free next month?”

I checked my calendar. I told my wife that I was invited to El Salvador. She said, “Go if you want.” I called him back and said, “I’m in,” and my quick adventure began, together with my colleague Rabbi Jack Luxemburg.

Before I offer this Passover message, I want to wish my Christian friends a joyous Easter and my Muslim friends a blessed Ramadan.

On Wednesday, we Jews will replay last year's seder, our parents' seder, our great grandparents' seder, our rabbinic sages' seder—all as we harken back to that fateful night when all of us left Egypt. At the Miller table, we will be blessed with four generations of family, extended family, and friends.

Yesterday and today, the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, Judi and I drove from our family vacation in Fort Lauderdale back to our home in Maryland. We flew up I-95 which has to be the most temperamental highway in the country. Suddenly, the traffic stops in Jacksonville, and then again in Georgia, and then again in South Carolina and then it stops in North Carolina, until we got to Virginia. And then the traffic stopped us in our tracks once again. Just like that, the fifteen-hour trip required our sitting in the car for twenty hours. It may have something to do with the theory of relativity.

This summer, I was sad to read that 42% of Protestant clergy polled are actively considering leaving the pulpit in the near future. But I wasn’t entirely surprised. I want to examine with you the sense of gloom that permeates the ether for some of this present generation of pulpiteers, regardless of denomination or faith community.

In 2006, my son Aaron, graduated Brandeis University with a degree in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. The next week he married my wonderful daughter-in-law, Lauren, and headed off to Jerusalem as a first-year seminarian at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. “OMG,” I said to myself. He is following exactly in his dear old dad’s footsteps.

I have a vague memory of listening to the Kingston Trio singing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” on a warped vinyl recording on my parents’ stereo, which at that time was a bona fide piece of furniture in the living room. It made a hiccup with every rotation of the turntable. My generation thought that music with scratches and the occasional skip was normal.

I will let the French, the Italians and the Hawaiians work out among themselves which spoken language is the most beautiful and get back to me. But I assure you that no language is more expressive, clever or snarky as Yiddish, the medieval Eastern European Jewish vernacular. I can speak a little Yiddish, understand a little more than I can speak and because I am genetically programmed as such I think in Yiddish even if my mommeh loshen, my mother tongue is English.

This is my first newsletter. It is really a blog, but the word blog sounds so much like an intestinal obstruction that I prefer the term “newsletter.” I will not be sharing any news that is worthy of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. I am calling my newsletter Backwards and Forwards. Twice a month I will share with you some thoughts, travel journals, excerpts from past articles and sermons and reflections—mostly lighthearted—about the lives we are living.