We sometimes forget, since it has been a long trek through the [Book of] Exodus, that as we get to B’midbar, the Israelites have only been out of Egypt for a little over a year.  They are not aware that there are decades of wandering to come and that...

Money is important. No one can deny that fact. We love it and we hate it, but ultimately, we need it. And in college, it’s on everyone’s minds. Whether graduating in four years or one month, every student is thinking about how he or she might get...

A Jewish folktale tells of  a man visiting hell, being amazed to find its inhabitants all seated at long tables, with fancy tablecloths, beautiful silverware, and a spread of delicious looking food and delicacies. As he looked more closely, he noticed...

Seventeen years ago, our daughter invited me to become a bat mitzvah with her. In the world I grew up in, bat mitzvah was not a choice. This lifecycle was something reserved for my brothers, not for their older sisters. Our family embraced the transformations...

This week’s Torah portion, Shemini, wraps up the eight-day inauguration ceremony of the Tabernacle and its Kohanim, the priests.  On the eighth day of the inauguration, as a coda to the process, a calf was brought on the altar and a Divine fire emerged...

All of my writing teachers stress the importance of writing. “Duh,” you might think, but I don’t mean the significance of the writing itself—what I’m referring to is the importance of the starting, putting words onto paper. I have been staring...

The book of Exodus ends with two portions, Vayakheil and Pekudei, one of the seven possible double portions calculated to keep the alignment of the Jewish year.  Each of the five books in the Torah has several names.  In Hebrew, the Book of Exodus is...

It’s a theme that is familiar to all, whether as expressed in the cliché, “While the cat’s away, the mice will play,” or in the myriad of productions in which the adolescents, in the absence of their parents, do something wild and crazy — inviting...

This week, my alarm woke me at the following times in the morning, 9, 9:30, 8:50, 11 and 8:20. On Saturday I slept until 2:30 in the afternoon. Mondays I have class from 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m., but Thursdays I only go from 2:30-4 p.m. Wednesdays, I am away...