As we come to the end of the year, it can be tempting to focus on setting goals, creating resolutions, and imagining dreams for the year ahead. But all too often, we fall short of these goals and end up frustrated, whether we want to move ahead in our...

I have one sister and three brothers. My brothers and I were fiercely protective of our sister, especially when she came of age to date. Her dates would have to run the gauntlet! During her high school years, I don’t believe that there was a single...

In the title story of Philip Roth’s “Goodbye Columbus,” a young man from Brooklyn’s lower middle-class has been invited to dinner at his girlfriend’s home in one of Long Island’s more posh neighborhoods. Her family has a huge home, and dinner...

It has been decades now since I first heard the late Rabbi Harold Schulweis speak to a rabbinical convention I attended. In this particular talk, Rabbi Schulweis taught that too often, parents viewed their children as “naches producers.” When parents...

It seems as though every Monday and Thursday someone is writing an article or a book in an attempt to answer the question, “Why be Jewish?” This speaks to the pressure to assimilate, on the one hand, and the desire to preserve Judaism and the Jewish...

A man goes on a business trip to a foreign country with his spouse. In preparation for this journey, he studies a bit about the culture, the people and the laws of the land. There is much to fear, though the reward of traveling there outweighs the fear....

It was Tuesday, Sept. 23, 1997, when I received the call from my father that my beloved mother had finally succumbed to her metastatic lung cancer. At our congregation in Chattanooga, Tenn., I was deeply involved in preparations for the High Holy Days,...

Rabbi Josef Davidson is more Jose Oquendo than Michael Jordan.Even though Davidson, like Jordan, came out of retirement, to become an assistant rabbi at Congregation B’nai Amoona, he says he did not do so to be the rabbi, but rather to serve as a “utility...

Growing up in Denver, one of my favorite places to visit was Cave of the Winds just outside Colorado Springs.Overcoming my claustrophobia, I found the stalactites and stalagmites fascinating, with their beautiful shapes and colors created from dripping...

In his most famous work, “The Dybbuk,” Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport, the Jewish Russian author who wrote under the pseudonym of S. Ansky, created a character named Rabbi Azriel, who taught the following with regard to the holy confluence of time, person,...

This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tissa, begins with a census. Moses is instructed to count the number of men available to be conscripted in the event of the need for self-defense against any enemy forces that might be encountered during their wandering...