Author Archives: hadassahalderson

I should be in bed asleep, but I had a thought before I go to bed. I thought about all the prayers I ought to say: a prayer for the United States, that we be not just happy and well off but that we be a good people, a brave and just people; a prayerContinue reading “God, Bless My Dreams”

I remember once a long time ago, I had a teacher who told me, “Studying is a Process.” At that point in my life I had just begun studying Whitehead and had read Spinoza. I was also just starting my Jewish journey. Yet I had that momentary insight, “Goodness is a Process, too.” We allContinue reading “Climbing Virtue’s Rungs”

Ah… For the last two weeks up to Sunday I was having a horrible time working. For all that time, try though I would I could not read Peter the Great: His Life and World. I would read and reread 300-350 (I think) but could not remember a certain thing in it. Well, I putContinue reading “Things are Looking Up”

I never liked romances. Part of it was my family; except my Aunt Clara, all of my family members make fun of that genre of fiction. Yet part of it is the formulaic nature of those stories: the same hero and heroine meet, fall in love, marry… and usually there is lots of sex inContinue reading “The Princess in the Story”

I remember making a grave theological error years ago–luckily, nobody was hurt–in a homework assignment. The idea I propounded was that if a person who means no good in a blameworthy act was deflected in doing their evil deed, then as long as their was no harm done to the intended victim, the first personContinue reading “Deed and Spirit”

Writing my last email I thought of the words “Charity begins at home,” and it occurred to me: “Do I know if, since President Trump left office, anything has been done about the plight of Puerto Rico due to the hurricane that hit there?” I honestly do not know. I know during Trump’s term thatContinue reading “Puerto Rico”

I have been neglecting an issue in my blog that should be on all of our hearts and minds… it is the crisis in Syria and Turkey… Though workers from the U.S. and other countries–notably war-torn Ukraine–have been struggling to find any survivors of the earthquake, there is still a future mountain to climb: theContinue reading “Crisis in Syria/Turkey”

Although I have longed to find the time to read Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I often wish that there were some great book about the rise of the Roman city state and Rome before Julius Cesar. Why? Because the nobility of Rome in its rise surpasses any real moral scruplesContinue reading “Cicero: the Last True Roman”

When I am researching, I try to read 100 pages a day. How I do it is I read 50 pages in the morning/afternoon and 50 pages in the evening. For the longest time I did this with ease, but lately this is often difficult. Either I am busy–but this is only occasionally a problem–orContinue reading “To Read or Not to Read”

Years ago an elderly Jew at my synagogue said of the weekly reading, “Each one of us has a portion we wish we could leave out. My portion is the portion on leprosy. I wish we did not have to read that the leper is cast out of the community.” Of course, we know theContinue reading “To Embrace the Leper”