Marriage Matters
Along with the new Jewish year we welcomed a new cycle of Torah-readings. For Californians, the first post-Sukkot Sabbath reading was particularly timely, coming as it did a mere ten days before the 2008...
Category: Morality
Untruth in Advertising
Thanks all the same but no, I’d prefer my next party not be “the talk of the town.” The advertisement promising town-wide tittering over my gala affair was for a Jerusalem hotel, and appeared...
Horribly Wrong
Sometimes a word or set of words is just so jarring, so inappropriate or so cruel that it causes actual pain. Jewish religious law forbids such language to Jews as ono’at d’varim pain-causing words....
A World Going Ape
It’s easy to snickeringly dismiss the recent disclosure that the late hotelier Leona Helmsley not only left $12 million to her dog but nearly all of the rest of her estate – an estimated...
The Post that Wasn’t
When I wrote two weeks ago that I was “back,” and hoped to resume posting more frequently, I also wrote that I planned a post on “Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance...
The Road Taken
As summer unfolds, we behold and endure graduation ceremonies – the recognition of academic milestones, the bestowing of diplomas, the conferring of awards and the delivery, to excess, of commencement addresses. Having had the...
What Would Hillel Say?
Once upon a time, Jews who found Judaism cumbersome simply declared the Torah obsolete and went about their lives as they pleased. They weren’t inclined to intellectual contortions. Some “progressive” Jews today, though, choose...
In praise of Normalcy
Just before Pesach, the front pages of all Israel’s major papers were filled for days with three cases of horrific child abuse. In two of the cases, some of the children involved will likely...
The Four Answers
It is not only the Torah’s words that hold multiple layers of meaning. So do those of the Talmudic and Midrashic Sages – even the words of the prayers and rituals they formulated. Such...
Guess What? Money Can Buy Happiness
Everyone knows that “Money can’t buy happiness.” It turns out, though, that this is yet another case where the conventional wisdom is wrong. Money can buy happiness if you spend it the right way....
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