Rabbi Bruce's Reflections on Life

Dear Friends, I wanted to give you an update. It is now 44 weeks and perhaps it was being secluded in the snow and not seeing people for a few days or perhaps it is because it was the first snow storm since Sue passed away, but it has been a challenging time. Sometime soon, an editor is going to be compiling these blogs and the commentary I am writing and we hope to publish my musings sometime during 2026. Recently, one of our children and I were talking about an idea in Jewish life that there are 36 righteous people in every generation. We don't know who they are since they work behind the scenes and are unassuming. As we were talking about this, I realized that I may have been married to one of them. Many of you reading these blogs have told me that you never realized all the things that Sue did during her lifetime. These people are called lamed vavniks since the Hebrew letter "lamed" is numerically 30 (each Hebrew letter has a numerical value...this is called ge...

Dear Family and Friends, I think it is time. I will continue to blog on the blog site listed below but will be taking a break from sending these to individuals. It is time to begin to put these blogs for the past nine months into a book that I might be able to publish. Occasionally I will send them to you in this fashion if I am in need of support and guidance. I cannot express my gratitude to so many of you who have accompanied me on this journey. I hope you will stay in touch as you have done even though you are not personally receiving these blogs. Your friendship, caring, and love have been inspirational and have allowed me to continue to live and not merely survive. As a person who has made his career using words, I cannot find the words to thank you for your compassion. So...I will just say, "THANK YOU." Let me explain why I think it is time to take a break. I continue to hear Sue's voice telling me that I have said much of what I have written already ...

Dear Friends, In the Broadway Musical South Pacific, there is a song, "some enchanted evening you will meet a stranger...you will meet a stranger across a cr;owded room... Well, Sue and I met at Hillel in 1973 but the romance of the song didn't happen. We were at a coffee house as I recall and her friend was playing the guitar and was playing "Classical Gas." We were cordial and knew who each other were...but that was it. UNTIL... As you may remember from previous blogs, I got her convicted in a trial in Hebrew in the fall of 1974 in a Hebrew class. I teased her...what else is new...:-) and she stuck her tongue out at me. The rest is history as we developed a friendship that lasted into six decades. I will always be grateful to my mother for encouraging me to take one more semester of Hebrew because as she put it, "you might meet some nice Jewish girl." Well, I did meet a Jewish girl:-) ( I would tease Sue about this occasionally.... Last nigh...