This coming Sabbath service at our synagogue, I’m doing one of the Torah readings, from the Gospels, the first part of John chapter 11.

You may notice two funny things in that sentence. Firstly, as part of our Torah service, we don’t only read the standard parshah from the Torah (the first five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) and the corresponding reading from the Haftarah (a selection of readings from the Prophets). We also read a passage from the Besorah, that is, the Gospels, following the Chayei Yeshua reading cycle (“Life of Yeshua” reading cycle).

I’m preempting my usual “Friday Fun” column, because this past week was a crappy week, crappy enough to justify a little mourning.

Tuesday afternoon, as you know, a catastrophic earthquake hit Haiti, killing tens of thousands—maybe even 100,000. That number represents one out of every 95-or-so people in that small country.

Shortly thereafter, we received news of the passing of my mother-in-law.

Shorty after that, a friend received news of the passing of his grandfather.

(This series of events also explains why I haven’t been blogging this week.)

So instead of my usual humorous, lighthearted Friday sketch, today I’d like to talk about some of the thoughts that have occurred to me this week.