Gathering for What? Walk into almost any room and you’ll hear people talking about the importance of community. Politicians promise to build one, businesses try to create one, and social media platforms are built around them because…
The Eternal Rebellion Against Responsibility“IT’S THE JEWS. IT’S THE JEWS. IT’S THE JEWS.” Those all-caps words comprise the answer offered to the question of “who is to blame for all the wrong in the world,” according to…
Purpose, Not Privilege: Why Shavuos Still Matters Every nation tells a story about itself. Some are built around land, language, ethnicity or political ideology but the Jewish people tell a different kind of story — one that…
A Society That Refuses to Give Up on PeopleImagine the following two scenarios. (1) A person sells land that has been in their family for generations. Years later, they realize it was a terrible mistake. The family…
The Sacred Space of the Unseen: When Kindness Has No WitnessImagine anonymously doing something kind for someone. No thank you or recognition; would you still do it? That question is addressed in the middle of this week’s…
The Box Was Never Just a Box: Rethinking Holiness Karl Duncker, one of the pioneers of Gestalt psychology, conceived a challenge to demonstrate the need for unconventional thinking. In a room with a table pushed against the…
A Heartbeat in the Mountains: Never Out of Range One of the greatest rescues in modern history happened two weeks ago when an American F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down in Iran. The Weapons Systems Officer was…
A New Pair of Glasses There is a non-kosher bird mentioned in the Torah called the Ra’ah. Scholars are not certain exactly which bird it is; many think it’s a buzzard or vulture. It is called Ra’ah (literally to see) because…
Dye, dye…einu, are words of a song etched in the collective consciousness of the Jewish mind and heart for thousands of years. The word “Dayeinu” means “it would have been enough for us.” This traditional up-beat Passover…
There Are No Small Mitzvos Our Parsha begins with what seems like a very simple, even menial task: the removal of the ashes from the Alter. The Torah describes how the Kohen must put on special garments…
