• Blog,  Coming Alive Memoir

    Celebrating Light: Winter Solstice

      When the words come, they are merely empty shells without the music. They live as they are sung, for the words are the body and the music the spirit.  – St. Hildegard of Bingen   A Story  When the great Rabbi Israel Ba’al Shem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews, it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light the fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted. Years later when a disciple of the Ba’al Shem-Tov, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he…