This week’s #writephoto, combined with the caption, made me think of “Push it out to sea,” which comes from the summer of 2000.

But, in the summer of 2000, I was nowhere close to the sea. I was preparing for my bar mitzvah, in Nebraska. There’s a mild story that will segue intoט the main part.

One line of Psalm 97 reads in Hebrew as follows, and then the English translation as per Siddur Sim Shalom (1985 edition) will follow:

אש לפניו תלך, ותלהט סביב צריו. האירו ברקיו תבל, ראתה ותחל הארץ.

(“[God’s] lightning illumines the globe, fire consumes [God’s] foes.”

Traditionally at my synagogue in Lincoln, we read this psalm responsively in English. However, when I was younger, I frequently misread “illumine” as “illuminate.” Maybe a minor error, but it’s a nice segue into a sequence of mondegreens, inspired by the photo. And “push it out to sea” is the first mondegreen, which I first heard in the summer of 2000 when I was in the car with Mom, picking up Casey from gymnastics.

Continue reading at Never a Worry