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beitmalkhut.org

Author: mira

Mira Z. Amiras is Professor of Comparative Religious Studies and founder of the Middle East Studies Program at San Jose State University. She is past-president of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, and has served on the Executive Council of the American Anthropological Association. She is co-founder, with Ovid Jacob, of Beit Malkhut, a study group in Jewish sacred text. She's most attached to the creatures of her body and her household — first and foremost, her kids, of course: Michael and Rayna — and then the other folks large and small of various species, including Roshi and Vlad, a whole lot of hummingbirds, the old parrot who lives next door, and a beautiful garden that does what it will.

a kaddish for Randy — guest post from Tim Lavalli

Posted on 27 June 201129 June 2011 by mira

A good friend died this week. He took his own life. We are all shocked and saddened by his passing and we are all asking ourselves – why? Which is to say, we are having the normal human reaction to such an unnecessary loss. I am not going to praise him here, you did not…

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on suicide

Posted on 25 June 2011 by mira

Just when I was feeling all kadished-out.  Just when I thought I couldn’t write another thing about death, death and dying, loss, grief, the ones I love, terrible events …  Just when I thought that the kaddish project — our kaddish in two-part harmony — had done its job a few months shy of a…

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my father’s favorite boys speak up

Posted on 13 June 2011 by mira

Did the tzaddik walk into a bar? Did he drink a beer? Did he watch the World Series on that day? So. The answer appears to be (I’ll cut to the chase) — no, he did not.  The whole tzaddik walks into a bar story that I told, turns out to be almost completely off….

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the religion of labor: remembering a.d. gordon

Posted on 8 June 20118 June 2011 by mira

I can’t seem to let A.D. Gordon go.  And yet his is not an ideology that almost anyone seems to care about these days. Isn’t the modern task to seek more leisure and relegate labor to lesser beings — transient workers, illegal immigrants, cheap Arab labor, robots if you’ve got ’em? Aharon David Gordon was…

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a tzaddik walks into a bar…

Posted on 3 June 20113 June 2011 by mira

They were driving between X and Y — who knows where they’d been. They were rushing. Last game of the World Series was about to start, and they weren’t anywhere near getting back on time to watch the game.

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my father’s favorite boys

Posted on 30 May 201130 May 2011 by mira

Fred and Harold and my dad were like the Marx Brothers. Or the Coen Brothers. Or the Brady Bunch. Or. Or. Or maybe there was nothing like them at all.  A team. A pack. A family. A coven.  A comedy show. My father loved ‘those boys’ with all his heart, and all his might and…

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yahrtzeit for galina

Posted on 25 May 201125 May 2011 by mira

your quizzical smile eyes cocked, waiting you say nothing, save ‘why?‘ and they pour out their secrets and you — you collect them and you do them justice but that’s just our business— that’s just our business your fingertips arranging their tales for the ages their children will read you they’ll wish they could find…

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malkah, magnes, and the military police

Posted on 24 May 201124 May 2011 by mira

Malkah was at the Madrid airport, as wholesome as she could be. She had a husband with her and two squeaky clean children with her. And all their camping gear. And all her archives notes. And all her permissions to conduct research. And she got detained anyway trying to leave the country.  It wasn’t the…

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the doors

Posted on 21 May 201123 May 2011 by mira

I live for the doors. I wait for them. It’s an exercise in great patience. Endurance even. First off, however, this is not a post about Jim Morrison. Though it could be. He walked through these doors as well. So. I wait for doors. Wait for them to open. I watch them start to shut….

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a kaddish for captain jack sparrow

Posted on 21 May 2011 by mira

Okay. So. Another Pirates of the Caribbean came out today. And I had absolutely no plans to see it. But we happened to be in the neighborhood, and there wasn’t a line, and there were plenty of tickets, and the timing was right — There were also plenty of good seats. Bad omen, right? Good…

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Categories

  • kaddish in two-part harmony (552)
    • essays (158)
    • guest essays (11)
    • podcasts (388)
    • project news (13)
    • tzaddik stories (31)
  • Seymour Fromer z"l (16)
  • the rebbe's queer daughters (11)

Posts

  • kaddish for anke akevit (2015-20)
  • a kaddish for too many suicide victims—but it gets better!
  • a kaddish for sigrid syltetøy vang, b. 2006, d. 27 February 2018
  • guest kaddish: velvet marquesa flicka storm, 11 august 2005–9 april 2015
  • the stones I cannot place
  • oh amy, how could you — a kaddish for amy smith
  • guest kaddish: Gudrun Fossum Vang (16 June 1905–3 April 1972)
  • occasional kaddish: for Josephine Selvig Anderson (11 April 1915– 22 January 2012)
  • and death is so much closer than it was—a kaddish for rebecca fromer
  • easy come easy go: a kaddish for adrienne cooper
  • nyt remembrances—a kaddish for departed strangers
  • guest kaddish from David Mohr—for Kimba
  • killing you loudly—a kaddish
  • anything, anything but a mystical experience
  • daily kaddish: our project’s yahrtzeit

Contact the authors

email mira and erin: kaddish@beitmalkhut.org

Archives

anthropology backstage cats Charlotte Adams China choreography collaboration dads death death and dying divorce dogs exhaustion grief japan Jewish identity John Manning kabbalah kaddish life cycle Magnes Museum Malkah Middle East moms mourning murder music musicians musicology parenting piano ritual Sephardi Seymour Fromer Space Place suicide supine text the rebbe's queer daughters tzaddik tzaddik stories University of Iowa women writing yahrtzeit

Copyright

© 2010–22 by Mira Z. Amiras and Erin Vang (beitmalkhut.org). All rights reserved worldwide.

thank you—תודה רבה

Permission to use Lev Kogan's "Kaddish," © 1982 by Israel Brass Woodwind Publications
In-kind support: Global Pragmatica LLC®

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