Dear Friends, It’s Summer Solstice. It just sounds good to say! The longest day of the year, the Summer Solstice officially represents the point at which the Earth’s axis tilts the closest to the Sun (the peak point was actually 11:07 BST.) In an added benefit, the weather also cooperated to ensure our maximally-sunny day was […]
Dear Friends, It seems that summer is the season of weddings. We have four new SAMS couples celebrating their upcoming nuptials over the next few months. Four different stories of laughter, learning, loss, and, of course, love. Often the most difficult part of my job is trying to answer those pressing questions facing the newly engaged: how […]
I’ve always been a big fan of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. From a young age, I can remember the characteristic swell of strings in the background of memories. I always enjoyed the story the music told, taking the listener through the course of the year– beautifully realising the patterns of nature into the harmonics of music. The […]
Much has been made of the sibling challenge to Moses in this week’s parashah: “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Kushite woman he had married: ‘He married a Kushite woman!’” (Num. 12:1) Various commentators have proposed to explain this strange verse, saying that either 1) Miriam was jealous of Tsipporah’s beauty, or […]