A corpse. A corpse on Union Street, New Orleans. It is fourteen years later and I still cannot get the vision out of my mind. In the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the New York Times ran a story about a corpse that remained on the street for days, without anybody giving it much more than …
“I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I do what I know is right!” Ever come across someone with this attitude? Have any friends or relatives like that? Strong minded. Not easily swayed by trends and fads. A person of principle. While such people are usually not exactly the warm and fuzzy types, making them …
Parshas Re’eh – Doing What’s Good and What’s Right Read More »
As someone with a lousy (read: nonexistent) sense of direction, a GPS is one of the best gifts I ever received. However, even the GPS was no match for my poor (read: nonexistent) sense of direction – I still managed to “outsmart” it and get lost; though it admittedly occurred with less frequency. So I …
Written a number of years ago, yet eternally relevant. I write these words from somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, as I return home to New Jersey from a week-long trip to Israel. But am I really returning home? On the one hand the answer is a resounding yes. I long to reunite with my wonderful …
“Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it” (Koheles 11:1). In this week’s Torah portion, we find the Jewish people, in their fortieth year of wandering through the desert, arriving at an area called Kadesh and realizing that there is no water to be found. They are (understandably) not …
From the sea they didn’t want to leave, from the mountain they couldn’t get away fast enough. The Torah tells us that after the miraculous splitting of the sea, all the Egyptian gold and jewelry was washed ashore, and the Jewish people were hesitant to lose the opportunity to gather it in — Moshe had …
Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” Rarely is a slogan so well known, yet so profoundly untrue. As recent tragic cases of bullying and cyber-bullying have shown, words, taunts, and names can not only hurt, they can literally kill. In the words of contemporary R&B artist Dave Barnes: …
What is the most difficult mitzvah in the Torah? Fasting on Yom Kippur? No Oreos for eight days on Passover? No texting for 25 hours on Shabbos? Surprisingly, some commentaries say that the most difficult is the one, found in this week’s Torah portion, commanding us to rejoice on the festivals. Because happiness is serious business, with …
Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz recently penned an open “letter to Hashem (G-d)”, asking why we pray for a third Temple that will include animal sacrifice. I will be bold enough to assume that he has not yet received what the Kabbalists refer to as a piska min shimaya – a miraculous letter from Heaven – in response. But that’s …
“What should a person do to live? He should kill himself! And what should a person do to die? He should enliven himself!” This enigmatic Talmudic passage begs for interpretation. Life is death and death is life? Were the Rabbis giving suicide advice or encouraging a morbid or nihilistic outlook on life, G-d forbid? Of …