Hillel Goldberg

Raacheli Fried, a Los Angeles native and resident of East Denver, organized a “Tehillim group,” a Psalms group, 11 years ago. People in the group recite Psalms for many reasons, among them a “complete healing,” a refuah shelemah, for sick people. A Tehillim group may also be organized to pray for a single person, as Essie Fleischmann has done.

As Shavuot approaches and the anniversary of the revelation of the Torah looms, it is inspiring to contemplate the teachings of those who mastered the Torah on a level that is beyond us. One such master was the Vilna Gaon, the “Genius of Vilna,” Rabbi Elijah son of Shlomo Zalman (d. 1797).

The headline above is the number of kilometers that light travels in one year. The Milky Way, the galaxy in which Earth is located, has a diameter of 100,000 light years. To get the diameter of the Milky Way, good luck multiplying the 13-digit number, 9,460,730,472,580.8 kilometers (one light year), by the numbers it would take to write out 100,000 light years.

What is trite today was serious yesterday. As we mark the 78th anniversary of the State of Israel, do you recall what was being said only three short years ago on the 75th anniversary of Israel? All manner of learned commentators, not to mention Israel’s enemies, were informing us that in Jewish history the lifespan of a Jewish state is 75 years.

Who would have thought that a voice message could be a work of art? If you called Arel Rachel Mishory and she couldn’t pick up, you were treated to a serious message lightened as a clever ditty. How I wish I would have transcribed these messages. They made you listen longer than you expected to, when all you wanted to do was to leave your name and number, but they weren’t annoying. They were engaging.