It is nearing the end – (In fact, Many years this is the end –) Of the desert journey. We have come far (Not so much in miles as In consciousness) We have come close (Not so much to a place as To ourselves) It is nearing the end of the fourth book: The Holy Land on the horizon; A sun and dream dawning – Brilliant rays turning the dark

Peddlers of the English language have the good fortune of choosing from hundreds of thousands of words. Any given idea may be stated in the Latin, Germanic or Saxon tongues. Are you crazy (Scandinavian), lunatic (French), insane (Latin) maniacal (Greek) or just meshuge (Yiddish/Hebrew)?

I refuse to tell the whole joke. But somehow that super clichéd line about my father’s a kohein and my grandfather’s a kohein (so I wanted to be a kohein too) never fails to deliver concomitant grins - and groans (usually from the same people). Our parsha marks the first appearance of a man, whose father was a kohein, whose grandfather was a kohein and yet he himself was not a kohein...

Cool Calm Collected Walk with perfect posture, Personality put out to pasture: Upright, uptight – aligned In perfect symmetry with The vertical ruler that is Necktie, but really Cravat: Blood flow stalled, passion Stifled, life suppressed, re- Pressed, vitality oppressed, Soul hard-pressed To find Shoes tasseled (never tussled) Business hustled (never hassled)

At the lip of a cliff, The cliff of a lip, Letters tumble one Over another, head- Long, trampoline Trampling, stumbling Stampeding from Inside out, over, in: Inside the self, out Of the mouth, over The lip, into the ear

Ironically and sadly, we need our enemies to remind us of our greatness. Perhaps this is why we walk into shul everyday with Bilaam's prophetic observation, mah tovu ohalecha Yaakov (24:5 - How goodly are your tents, O Jacob) on our lips

Life is learning when to listen To which voice And when and which to ignore. But there are times when voices, Are at a loss for words:

During wartime, a certain individual would come to the country’s border with a wheelbarrow full of dirt. The border guard looked at the man’s papers and all was in order for him to cross. But the guard was certain the man was smuggling some sort of contraband in the wheelbarrow. So the guard took a shovel...