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Avot is your Best Friend - The Pshat Heard 'Round the World Returns!

 I created The Pshat Heard 'Round the World some eighteen years ago, and I posted weekly on the parashah for about two years. Other items were added here and there subsequently, but for a long time it's been inactive. IYH, I will be starting a new series of pieces on tefillah, with special attention to the first beracha of the Amidah. My claim and approach will be that the first beracha of the Amidah teaches us how to pray and how to pray it! We'll start with a few preparatory and introductory pieces before jumping in to the beracha itself, phrase by phrase. I am considering enabling comments and dealing with "hackish" comments as they inevitably come, so keep tuned.
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About

IndustryEducation, Fintech
OccupationTeacher, System Administrator
LocationEfrat, Gush Etzion, Israel
IntroductionBorn and raised in L.A. in an idiosyncratic Jewish American home, Physics from U.C.L.A., Junior Year Abroad in Israel was life-reorienting, launching me on a lifetime of Jewish exploration and commitment. My path led me through many Jewish communities and sub-communities and brought me in contact with a rich and mutually irreconcilable panoply of Jewish souls, hearts and minds. Through it all there has been learning Torah, delving into its many crystal-clear pools and half-lighted deeps. Years and years of teaching Torah and listening to and sharing with people searching high and low have been followed and buttressed, professionally, by work in the world of hi-tech. Everything made possible by my family - my beloved wife and the children and grandchildren with whom Hashem has blessed us.
InterestsMy granddaughters, Tefillah, Midrash, Aggadah, Rav Kook, Eretz Yisrael, the nexus between faith and reason, the mind-brain question, playing guitar, learning spoken Arabic
Favorite moviesThere Will Be Blood, Chinatown, Mulholland Drive, Unforgiven
Favorite musicBluegrass, Mahler, Gypsy Jazz, Boston
Favorite booksMoby Dick, Heart of Darkness, The Count of Monte Christo, Lord of the Rings

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