Michael S. Diamond, at The Blogs

Jan 4, 2024, 2:17 PM

The predator and carrion-eater have returned to the suburbs. The fox, the coyote, the vulture and the hawk now share our land and skies in numbers both thrilling and disturbing. Last week I saw them as I walked home...

Apr 13, 2022, 6:19 AM

Failures of Reconstruction

Turns out it was Jesus who said, according to Mark, “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.” Something about what happens if you cast out demons on behalf of the wrong name. Makes me...

Mar 18, 2022, 10:54 AM

Livin’ in the 2D World

I have conceived a prejudice against 2D people. I've tried to keep an open mind, but there's just too many of them. Also, it’s more taxing to interact with them, even to hold a simple conversation, for some reason....

Feb 22, 2022, 12:13 AM

Which Profession is Most Like God?

Some time after the creation of the world, the blink of an eye really, all the professions of mankind got together to ask the Creator to decide which one’s work most resembled the work of the Creator. The farmers...

Sep 18, 2021, 12:27 AM

The Forgiveness Cure: post holiday mop-up

Weird times. A whole lot in the world and in our communities to be worried about. And a whole lot to be angry about. How did it get this way? How did we come to this pass? I am...

Sep 6, 2021, 2:32 AM

The Book of Words as Things: a survival manual for the next incarnation

Deuteronomy, the Greek nomenclature for Devarim, second law, emphasizes the book as a retelling of the spiritual message of the entire preceding four books. Whether or not you believe it was ‘rediscovered’ by Josiah, the teenage king, during the...

Aug 21, 2021, 11:46 AM

At the Augury Doggery

Fidelity is inversely related to accessibility. Face-to-face conversation with another sentient being conveys a reasonable probability that one person will more or less get the gist of the other person’s message, their intent, their content, their raison de parler....

Jun 17, 2021, 7:41 AM

The faithful betrayer: Week-old Torah freshened up

Virus expelled from the computer network.

It was the week of the faithful betrayer, Korach. His sons are memorialized in their contributions to the psaltery, in spite of the founder of their line having come to a dramatic and untimely death. Korach was a bonafide...

Jun 5, 2021, 12:31 AM

When You Turn Up the Lights: week-old Torah freshened up

And the Ineffable said, “When you raise the lights,” Speak to Aaron, “against the front of the candelabrum,” And say to him, “seven lights will shine.” And the Ineffable said, “Take the Levites,” To Moses, “sprinkle them with cleansing water.” “And Aaron shall swing...

May 1, 2021, 1:21 AM

Chapter 26: The Crown Descends

In which Rav Ram Nissan HaKohen Tzedek Gadol enters The Sanctum Sanctorum. At the threshold, he grapples with a final spasm of Deepe Existential Doubt, and arrives at the Essence of Improvisation. Virtual becomes Actual, as Behemoth salvages parts...

About Me

Michael Diamond is a writer based in the Washington, DC area. He practices psychiatry there and is a doctor of medical qigong. He has published verse, fiction and translation in Andrei Codrescu’s journal, The Exquisite Corpse; in the journal Shirim courtesy of Dryad Press; in the online journal for Akashic Press; in New Mexico Review, The Deronda Review, The Atherton Review, The Blood Project, Ars Medica and in The Journal of the American Medical Association. He lives in the suburbs with his wife, an artist and illuminator of Hebrew manuscripts, their dog, two cats, a cockatiel named Peaches, a tank of hyperactive fish and ten-thousand honeybees. He has had a strong interest in Torah since first exposed to traditional stories as a child. Over the course of his life he has run the gamut of spiritual exploration of many world traditions of meditation and mythology. For the last several decades he has landed squarely in the traditional Jewish world. His writing is informed by all of this experience, by his curiosity about today's world and by his desire to mine the Jewish experience for its hidden and revealed wisdom. Torah Obscura, a glimpse of an otherwise invisible world afforded by a small aperture for light. All materials herein copyright © 2018 Michael S. Diamond. All rights reserved.

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