I love to bake bread.

Yes, I know, in a traditional mode, one does not bake bread on Shabbat. One bakes challah on yom shishi [Friday] but one does not bake on Shabbat.

My understanding of Shabbat, though, is that it is a day different from all other days, a day of rest, a taste of olam habah [the world to come], a day for enjoyment and family. And it is the one day of the week I bake. My sweetie and I spend Shabbat afternoon sitting in the warm kitchen, gradually assembling a nice soup, shmoozing with family and friends, smooching if family and friends don't show up, and I make bread.

Once upon a time, about 30 years ago, I made all the bread for my family. Breadmaking was sanity, health, and love. Now I do other things (perhaps saner things?) for sanity, health, and love, but on Shabbat afternoon, I love to bake a loaf of bread. Not challah -- usually a double measure of bread, one loaf of plain and one of whatever suits my fancy that day. Meanwhile a soup of odds and ends and leftovers and canned tomatoes simmers on the stove, and the door is open to whoever appears.

In difficult times, Shabbat keeps us going. For me, right now, the loaves of bread rising in the warm spot near the cooktop speak of the miracle of yeast that comes back from dry deadness, the elasticity of love.

I'm entering the home stretch of my rabbinical school years. The last year or so I've not posted so much, because frankly, I thought that the fine details of halakhah and ethics courses would be less than spellbinding reading for my friends and family.

I have the last third of my internship ahead of me in the coming term, 125 hours at the Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda, CA. I love that work very much: I feel like I'm making a real contribution and it includes the bonus of meeting fascinating people and hearing their stories.

My coursework is winding down. I'm meeting tomorrow with the Registrar at HUC to go over my transcript and make sure nothing is lacking, but as it stands now, I'll take a couple of courses this spring, and have only a tiny bit left for the fall. People have been asking me all through this process what could possibly take five or six years, and now I have the transcript to answer that question.

The big project on the horizon is my rabbinical thesis, and I'm completely at sea on that one. I hope to have some news in the near future, but for now it consists of ongoing conversations with several faculty members.

Increasingly, I miss my home up in Oakland. My sons are moving on in their lives: the "baby" who started college when I started HUC now holds a B.A. in Psychology from UC Santa Cruz. His older brother is out in the working world, full of plans and building a life. A couple of years back I reconnected with an old sweetheart, someone who'd been my friend for the 15 years since we went separate ways, and we're planning a wedding in May. Wherever "home" will be after my ordination in May 2008 (b'ezrat Hashem!) right now it is with the people I love, and they are all 400 miles north of Los Angeles, along with many dear friends.

I've just overhauled the template for this site, since Blogger.com offered some new possibilities. Welcome to 2007; I wonder what it will bring?

My friend Emily DeVoto has a marvelous blog, The Antidote: Counterspin for Health Care and Health News. It is exactly what it sounds like, a critical take on health and health care news. On Nov 30 she posted something that I thought I'd pass along: Something's Fishy.

The gist of it is that while it's good for our health to eat fish, some fish are being over-fished for their survival. That hardly seems fair, and beyond fairness, long term it could be really bad news. Her blog entry includes a PDF with a neat little fold-out thingie for your shopping bag that tells you which fish are your best buy from a survival point of view (ours and theirs.)

The good news, as far as I'm concerned, is that anchovies are still on the menu. I realize that may not thrill everyone, but I'm happy. Sardines are good, as is carp. The "big three," shrimp, tuna, and salmon, are more problematic (for more info, read her post and the PDF.)

It has taken a week for the news from last week's election to sink in: we are going to have a Democratic Congress. I thought I'd be ecstatic if that happened, but now I find I'm just sort of tired and cautiously optimistic.

There is so much to do to repair the damage of the last five years, and I do not envy the new Congress that has to do it. The national budget is hemorrhaging of red ink, Iraq is Terrorism Central, we have (in the words of Colin Powell) "broken it and bought it," and still the bodies keep piling up in Baghdad. The rest of the Middle East is festering, our allies are looking at us sideways, wondering if we can be trusted, and we've repudiated the Geneva Conventions, for crying out loud. Meanwhile our ports are vulnerable to attack, but my eye drops never go near the airport without a Ziplock baggie.

The world hasn't felt this dangerous to me since I knelt with the rest of the second graders in the hall at Overbrook School, praying that God would keep Castro from firing off those nukes at Miami. The difference is that this time I feel like we've mostly done this to ourselves.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know: terrorists. Even there, I'm sorry, I am not going to let my government off the hook: why didn't we hunt down Al Qaeda when we had them cornered in Afghanistan? Why did we squander every bit of the international goodwill after 9/11 on this stupid mess in Iraq? Why was Iraq deemed more important than the real threat of nukes in Iran and North Korea? Why have we run this so-called "war" without any sacrifices at home, with tax cuts and lattes all around?

And why, why, why do we keep calling the terrorists "jihadists" which is, to their ears, like calling them "the guys in the white hats"? Do our news media and our government not understand that when we do that, we are affirming that yes, indeed, we're the Great Satan?

Augh.

As for me, I am still praying. This time I'm praying for Nancy Pelosi and the other new leaders we've elected, praying that they will be wise and prudent and will not blow their precious political capital on dumb stuff like revenge. I'm praying that they will find a way out of these various messes. I'm praying that they can hang onto their souls while they do it.

In the meantime, I shall get back to my homework.

It's Motsei Shabbat -- the evening after Shabbat -- and I am enjoying the afterglow of a lovely day. I attended services today at Temple Beth Sholom in San Leandro, CA. Behind the large 60's synagogue is the tiny "Little Shul" from the 1890's. It is a haimish [homey] little place, and I felt instantly comfortable there.

Rabbi Harry Manhoff presided, but most of the service was led by a young woman from the congregation, and the Torah was chanted by several adults from the shul's Hebrew program. Very impressive!

The rest of the day was spent eating good food and chatting with friends at home. What could be more perfect?

In "Freakoutonomics," in the current issue of The New Republic, Jonathan Chait writes:

"Over the last quarter century, the portion of the national income accruing to the richest 1 percent of Americans has doubled. The share going to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent has tripled, and the share going to the richest one-hundredth of 1 percent has quadrupled."

This is serious, serious stuff and I recommend the entire article. Income inequality in this country has grown steadily in the past few years, and the rate of increase has skyrocketed recently. Chait points out that one of the ways we see this is in the economic dissatisfactions of the middle class: despite the fine performance of the economy on paper, those gains have gone to the most privileged in our country. Meanwhile, the poor have gotten poorer, and the middle class have gotten nowhere at all, and prices have done what prices do in a roaring economy -- they've gone up.

Another item I recommend: Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. It's an interesting view of the woman and the time: the ferment in the streets of Paris is visible only on the margins, an occasional downbeat reference almost lost in the sybaritic consumption, opulence, and sheer silliness of Versailles. The opening scene says it all in shorthand: a servant tends to Marie's toes while she languorously drags a finger through the icing on a cake.

Marie knows that she is a woman whose primary function is as a symbol and a womb: she is there to cement a bit of realpolitik and to bear heirs for the Bourbons. In the meantime, she is free to enjoy herself within the rules of the Versailles court, which means that the only part of her that enjoys much freedom is her purse. Goodies insue, until the revolution comes and the party is over. The movie ends then, allowing the viewer to contemplate the situation without the distractions of the prison and the guillotine.

I've seen some interviews in which Coppola says that she was interested in the idea of the teen monarchs, able to do as they like. Maybe so, but the movie also stands for me as a warning to those of us who enjoy prosperity in days that are not prosperous for everyone.

Marie Antoinette never said, "Let them eat cake." The movie and several other accounts portray her as a nice party girl who did the charitable things expected of her, and who shopped and consumed for fun. She loved her family, was a good mother, and was not much sillier than anyone else around her. A generation earlier, we might not remember her at all. We remember her and her luckless family because they didn't realize that privileges can be revoked until it was too late.

In a country where "the share going to the richest one-hundredth of 1 percent has quadrupled," we cannot afford to be so blinkered. Wake up, America: get your fingers out of the cake -- smell the republic burning.

I have put some new materials up on the website: this week's Torah study and Hebrew lesson, a guide to saying and writing blessings, and a poem connected with the Nachamu, Nachamu exhibit.