Mendel Horowitz

A personal essay about my father, baseball, and the ways tradition is passed from one generation to the next. Grateful to @firstthingsmag for publishing it.

@Jessica_KJacobs Query submitted

@MendelHorowitz Yes!

Excited to announce I've launched a literary agency: Blueprint Literary, based in Tel Aviv, representing Jewish, Israeli, Arab-Israeli, and Palestinian authors. blueprintliterary.com Submit here: submissions@blueprintliterary.com

@12_7_99_halleys In those moments, I sensed how tension and freedom can coexist within improvisation shaped by uncertainty and chance. tapmagazine.org/all-articles/a…

I mean fuck just listen to this. unreal

@GratefulDead The first time I heard Live/Dead: tapmagazine.org/all-articles/a…

These collections keep on Truckin’⚡ Which album is missing from your collection? 📸 vinyl_is_life_, christinavinylphile, vinylbenji on IG, and vinylhead_kj on TikTok

@jesusrglez Both: tapmagazine.org/all-articles/a…

Try both, it’s a win-win.

@MaxMannis Been following you for a while Max and have something to share. Can you follow me so I can DM?

No one needs to "care." It's an integral part of my identity. Will be til the end of time. A LOT of Jews are hiding their identity as antisemitism skyrockets. I fundamentally 100% reject that. If that means I've gotta be extra loud and proud to balance it out, that's no problem.

Happy to share something I wrote for The American Psychoanalyst. It's about the Grateful Dead, free association, and a dead-end street where I grew up. Hope it resonates. @GratefulDead @APA #psychoanalysis #freeassociation tapmagazine.org/all-articles/a…

@AndrewMarchand Andrew: I've been pitching an article about the relationships of a father, son, Judaism and baseball, rooted in Flushing Meadows and a Mets-loving Orthodox family from New York. DM?

Legendary Mets' play-by-player Howie Rose will retire at the end of this season. News story here. Column shortly nytimes.com/athletic/71308…

@WillSammon Will: I've been pitching an article about the relationships of a father, son, Judaism and baseball, rooted in Flushing Meadows and a Mets-loving Orthodox family from New York. DM?

Howie Rose is everything you want in a broadcaster. Prepared. Honest. Insightful. Curious. Informed. Entertaining. Every time, he meets the moment.

@AnthonyDiComo Anthony: I have an article to pitch about the relationships of a father, son, Judaism and baseball, rooted in Flushing Meadows and a Mets-loving Orthodox family from New York. DM?

Really touching moment today from retiring Mets broadcaster Howie Rose, who discussed his regret that his father never got to share in his career.

@tarpleyhitt @parisreview Mazal Tov!

Very happy to say I'm now online editor @parisreview and on the hunt for smart funny pitches (thitt@theparisreview.org)

@JonathanShedler Amen

🆕New Post just dropped “It is only recently in human history that we have begun to think of mental and emotional suffering in psychological, not moral, terms.” 👉free access jonathanshedler.substack.com/p/psychotherap…

@JonathanShedler It appalls me to think how much deep change I have prevented or delayed by my personal need to interpret. (Donald Winnicott)

Another example of why therapists should not reflexively ask questions. (For therapists: what if anything do you think this therapist was trying to accomplish… and can you think of a better way?)

BRING BACK RABBINIC TAN SUITS 😎

@DBashIdeas @themishpacha With Rabbi Shlomo Freifeld circa 1967

A tribute to my menahel, Rabbi Herzberg zt”l.

@DeanAbbott Same is true of some Orthodox Jewish clergymen and teachers

Many clergy are terrible at the counseling part of their job, and stories abound of people harmed by the thoughtless and shallow counsel of their pastors. One reason for this is that many pastors love preaching, and they do not see counseling as a separate vocation with its own dynamics and demands. Instead, they think of counseling as preaching to an audience of one. Preaching is about the clarification of doctrine and about providing answers. Many clergy are much less comfortable in the more fluid and ambiguous nature of the counseling room. If the pulpit is the place to propound doctrine, the counseling room is the place for openness. The counselor must not preach but listen deeply. This is hard to do for people who are often committed to the maintenance of “right belief.” Here, the evangelistic impulse must be held in abeyance, at least long enough for the counselee to speak freely enough to develop a real conception of their problems and their context. Where preachers are partisans, counselors must hold a kind of neutrality that privileges real curiosity over the impulse to teach. Without this approach, clergy do their counselees a disservice. They truncate, rather than encourage, the process of spiritual growth, and thus undermine what we would assume is the purpose of pastoral work in the first place. Here’s an example. I have been in pastoral counseling sessions with people who express a desire to more fully “live for the Lord.” When I say, “I’d like to hear a bit more about what that would look like for you,” they often can’t say. They can’t say, at least in part, because they have never been invited to speak freely and at length until their conception of a spiritual path emerges. For me to substitute what I think (or what anyone else thinks) for that process of self-discovery would do nothing but keep both of us stuck and short-circuit the process. None of this is to say you shouldn’t seek your pastor’s counsel, but when you do, it’s worth asking first about his or her approach to the practice.

@jesusrglez Mutuality

What happened here?

@DBashIdeas ת"ר נר חנוכה מצוה להניחה על פתח ביתו מבחוץ, אם היה דר בעלייה מניחה בחלון הסמוכה לרה"ר, ובשעת הסכנה מניחה על שולחנו ודיו. firstthings.com/hanukkah-light…

It is surreal how much attention Israel and the Jewish People command on the world stage.

Dave Chappelle’s new special is #1 on Netflix. He closes the show by telling the audience that he needs a code word that if he says it they’ll know he’s been compromised. “I stand with Israel.” That is the final joke of the special. Genuinely a scary moment to be Jewish.

@missmayim A Hanukkah of mixed emotions firstthings.com/hanukkah-light… #Hanukkah #Antisemitism