Painting Poems

We got snowed out of New York. So we did an art project! Below, we paint interpretations of our favorite poems. View the paintings with their full text. (We also painted mugs.)

By Leah and Daniel. <3

The Great Road Trip

This is what happens when you get snowed out of New York.

The Best of 2010

2010 was a good year for allergins. While cat dander fell 3%, dust mites and timothy grass rose 5% and 8% respectively, making for a boom year here at The Great Schnoz. Below, some of our favorite sneezes.


How to Carefully Write a Set of Haikus

Challah, the Dog Who Loved Challah

The Dalai Lama's Summit on Happiness

A Visit to Ioannina

Rivals--A Rosh Hashanah Sermon

The Shabbat Experiment

National Thank Your Counselor Day

Solidarity March for Gilad Shalit

How to Carefully Write a Set of Haikus

A set of haikus
On how to carefully write
A set of haikus.


1) Count on your hand.
2) Double check every line.
3) Be scrupulous.


This balanced budget
Can never be overspent,
Never overdrawn.


Starved for syllables
As if there were a famine.
Please use sparingly.


Gently arranging
Anapests next to iambs
Like playing Jenga.


Writer and reader
Share responsibility
For checking each line,


As if the writer
Would try to sneak some extra
Under the table.


I’m not that greedy.
I like having boundaries,
Some rules to play by.


You know the best way
To give a cow his freedom?
Fence in his pasture.

The Power of Conversation

We've been thinking at Hillel about the power of conversation. So many of the most meaningful experiences in my life have been real conversations with people who matter to me. Talks on long car rides, on swings, over breakfast. These are transformative moments. At Hillel, we're trying to capture these meaningful moments by practicing the art of conversation.

Last summer, I took a student named Adam on Birthright. We were sitting late at night in hotel hallway. He was telling me how he wishes he could stay in college for more than four years, that four years isn't enough to learn everything he wants to learn, to explore everything he wants to explore. "Sometimes I wonder why I'm a business major," he said. "At the end of the day, strategic management will help me run a business, but it doesn't really excite me."

He asked me what I studied in college--English and Jewish studies--and if I enjoyed it. I did. He asked me what my favorite class was. I really loved this class on the poetry of Emily Dickinson. For a whole semester, we poured over her 1700 poems, reading closely, probing deeply. I loved that a single poem could hold at the same time contradictory meanings, that neither meaning was less real or less true.

I asked what his favorite class was. "My freshman seminar--the Arab-Israeli Conflict. I'm a news junkie, so I loved learning about a subject that's still unfolding in the world. Something that isn't just in a text book and isn't just theory, but is actually happening in real people's lives."

He was looking for meaning.

Gilad March Nominated for Fain Award

This summer, URJ Camp Coleman staged a solidarity march for Gilad Shalit, the captured Israeli soldier. Now, the march has been nominated for the 2010 Irving J. Fain Award. The award, given by the Commision on Social Action of Reform Judaism, seeks to recognize outstanding and innovative social action work carried out by Reform congregations and summer camps.

During his four years in captivity, Gilad Shalit has been kept in total isolation and has been denied visits from humanitarian aid groups like the Red Cross. This is in direct violation of the Geneva Convention and is a violation of his human rights. Please sign this petition demanding that Gilad be released now, and that until he is released, that Hamas abide by the rules of the Geneva Convention.

Below, see photos from the Coleman march.

Challah, the Dog Who Loved Challah

A children's story. For Leah.


Challah, the Dog Who Loved Challah by Daniel Reiser is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.