Thank you

My shiva ended this morning, and I'm easing into getting back into the swing of things at work and for the blog. Things might remain slow on the blog for the next few days, though.

Thanks so much for the many messages of condolence sent to me, in the comments, email, Twitter and Facebook. I really do appreciate it.

Thanks also to Challah Hu Akbar for agreeing to pinch-hit for me. Please add his excellent blog to your bookmarks.

Special thanks to the two bloggers who attended the funeral in Israel, Aussie Dave of Israellycool and "Caleb ben Yefuneh" of Love of the Land.

While I generally do not talk about my personal life on my blog, I will make a brief exception here.

My father was a remarkable man. He was a Holocaust survivor who witnessed unspeakable horrors and the loss of family members when he was only a teenager. Yet he still managed to survive, marry a fellow survivor and raise a family in America, sacrificing much to allow his children to receive a Jewish education at a time that many of his fellow survivors abandoned Judaism altogether. He built a small business, literally starting it in our garage. He, and lehavdil bein chaim lechaim, my mother, tried very hard to ensure that their kids would be raised normally despite what they went through.  As Dad stated on the videotape he made for the USC Shoah Foundation, he just wanted his children to be good Jews - and not to ever have to go through one percent of what he went through.