If the Hebrews in the desert had insisted on forming a Union and a founding a limited liability partnership before risking their stiff necks at the Mishkan construction site, a likely name for their start-up would...
Resh Lakish was a sage with a past. Before his rabbinic career, he led the brutal life of a Roman gladiator. In later life, Resh Lakish was a model of piety, integrity, and personal honor....
I was never very good at math. It all goes back to the fourth grade. I came down with a case of some ordinary childhood disease, probably chicken pox, at just the time that Mrs....
Very much has been written about most family relationships. There are books about fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, and mothers and sons and daughters. Many volumes have...
Pirkei Avot (“Ethics of the Sages”), records the favorite teaching of Yossi ben Yochanan: “Open wide the doors of your home, and welcome the poor as members of your household.” This generous sentiment seems to have...
“The Holy One desires the heart,” the Rabbis say (Sanhedrin 106B). They define prayer as the “Service of the Heart” (Ta’anit 2A). Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther somewhat idiosyncratically echoed this principle: “Faith is...
Patrick Henry famously prayed: “Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” His celebrated concluding line echoed Joseph Addsion’s 1713 play “Cato”: “The...
Teaching young children has always been a joy for me. One of teaching’s special advantages is the clarity that emerges from conversation with people under the...
Silence is not always golden. The Talmud observes, Shtikah K’Hoda’ah: “Silence is tantamount to assent” (Bava Metzia 37B). We are taught this principle as young children. If a classmate is being bullied, if a friend...
