Lucky me, today's my colonoscopy

I'd like to repost something I last posted in 2008.

To answer the questions that will arise from this post:

1. Yes, I really am having a colonoscopy today.
2. Yes, I am over 50. Bli ayin hara (warding off evil eyes).
3. No, Dad did not die from colorectal cancer, although he did have it at the age of 49.
4. Since I had my last colonoscopy, a friend who hadn't gotten around to getting a

How BDS'ers intimidate entertainers from performing in Israel

As I may have mentioned in the seven and a half years I have been writing this blog, I pray my morning prayers at sunrise, seven days a week, and have done so for the past 17 years. There was one previous period in my life when I prayed at sunrise every day, and that was when I was in yeshiva. Some of my early-rising friends and I decided that the theme song of our prayer service should be

Mom's yahrtzeit

Tonight, the 21st day of the Hebrew month of Av is the 8th yahrtzeit (anniversary of the death) of my mother a"h (peace be upon her). In the picture, taken about a year before she passed away, she is holding my youngest child, son # 5, child # 8.

Although like nearly every Jew of her generation in the Boston area, Mom was a lifelong Democrat, she was also very strongly pro-Israel, and opposed