Category: Science and Health

A Teacher, A Friend, A Balancing Act – Thoughts Before Rosh HaShanah   We have a simple, but wonderful tradition on the Sabbaths between Passover and the Days of Awe – the study of Pirkei Avot, “The Sayings of the Fathers,” one chapter per week. As I study Pirkei Avot at this time of the […]

Comedian Jeff Ross lost his parents by the age of 19, lost his hair after making his mark in Hollywood and might have lost his life, had he not listened to a friend who encouraged him to get a colonoscopy last summer. Ross (whose real last name is Lifschultz) is currently on Broadway in his […]

Mayim, the compassion evident in your recent post about the Oct. 7 War against Hamas was deeply felt, and your desire for peace is shared by every Israeli parent who wants their child home safely, by every hostage family still living in a nightmare, and by millions of Jews who would give anything for this […]

Ariel Yaakov Marciano, 24, was attacked this past Sunday at the Santa Monica Pier by a group of around 20 young men. Marciano, who had traveled from Sacramento to Los Angeles for his cousin’s bar mitzvah, was exploring the area when he noticed dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators holding Palestinian and Mexican flags. Courtesy of Ariel […]

One of the biggest missed opportunities for American Jewry over the past several decades has been in Holocaust education. We’ve focused so much on the Holocaust we’ve overlooked the aftermath. Yes, it’s crucial for the world to know that six million Jews got murdered by a madman and his Nazi killing machine because they were […]

Abraham Joshua Heschel published The Earth Is the Lord’s in 1949. In his preface, he writes that, “The story about the life of the Jews in Eastern Europe which has come to an end in our days is what I have tried to tell in this essay.” This book is a heartbreaking elegy, a written […]

Mark Twain’s novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” published in 1884, is sometimes banned because of its constant use of the horrific term “nigger,” yet it is the least racist book imaginable. In fact, it is anti-racist. It is the story of a rebellious young boy in the pre-Civil War South who runs away from […]

This past July, Leo Terrell stepped onto the stage at the Israel on Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit, the largest pro-Israel student gathering in the United States. As he stood before the crowd, he explained why he was wearing a red baseball cap. It was not the signature MAGA hat supporting his boss, President Donald […]

I don’t have a knack for keeping plants alive. Often, I add too much water, or most of the time, forget to water the plant until it is just too late. Sometimes, I pretend the plant will grow in environments in which it is clearly impossible: no sunlight or window in sight. Determined to try […]

Reflections on the Weekly Torah Portion – Shoftim Judges and Officers I can remember one of the first spiritual-psychological Chasidic texts that I studied, a text that opened the gates to a lifetime of study. When I was about 28 years old – 1982 – one of my teachers introduced me to the great Chasidic […]