Voices

Bylined opinion and news columns published by United Hebrew Congregation Terre Haute.

Patty’s plan for the day — cast worries aside and play in the yard with Robert

By Patty Lewis
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I find myself checking the calendar these days to try to fix my place in time. But I guess time loses its meaning as this Covid-19 has really messed up the days and months in our lives.

Every evening, Ralph wants to know my plan for the next day.

Sometimes I tell him I think I will take a long trip and I will be back when this is over.

Of course, I know my family needs me here and we have no idea when our predicament will end. We just live day by day and stay home until it’s necessary to go out.

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Try Daf Yomi with Betsy and discover a page of Talmud a day

By Betsy Frank
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f you’re looking for a sustaining project you can tackle one day at a time, I’d like to suggest joining me for Daf Yomi, a culturally enriching scholarly exercise where Jews all over the world study a page of Talmud a day.

January 5, 2020, began the latest 7 1/2-year cycle of Daf Yomi, which myjewishlearning.com describes as “the longest-running Jewish book club“.

Rabbi Meir Shapiro founded the movement in 1923 in Poland. The Talmud’s 37 volumes take 7 1/2 years to read on a page-a-day schedule, placing us in the 14th repeating cycle of Daf Yomi.

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At this year’s Passover seder, we are all the son who does not know how to ask

By Student Rabbi Remy Liverman
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As we begin the Hebrew month of Nisan and prepare to celebrate Passover, never before has a discussion about plagues and a deep cleaning of our homes felt more relevant.

These strange and challenging times of COVID-19 would seem to take precedence over holidays. But there is so much we can learn from the seder, both in ritual and narrative.

We ask the Four Questions in Ma Nishtana: “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

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Temple counters social distancing with seder, Shabbat, Torah study via Zoom teleconference

By Betsy Frank
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As I was thinking about a topic for this month, the title of one of my favorite novels came to mind, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Coronavirus is our modern-day cholera or plague. To say the least, we live in interesting times.

And these times call for creative ways to stay connected. We have begun to make those connections by purchasing a Zoom videoconferencing account for our Temple community.

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