American Pie Purim

It’s become a tradition here in St. Louis that my wife and I invite the Yeshiva High School senior boys over each year for our Purim seuda. Given the logistics of our house, the males gather around a long table in the den while the women watch in amusement and, occasionally, dismay from the relative [...]

Song, Hope and Salvation in Honor of the L’Chaim of Yaakov and Amanda

An elaboration of remarks made this week at the l’chaim for my son Yaakov and his kallah, Amanda: It’s especially fitting to celebrate an engagement this week, when we will observe Shabbos Shira. It’s difficult for us to imagine what it was like for the Jews of Egypt when, after watching the systematic and miraculous [...]

The Danger Of Lowering Our Expectations

In a recently letter to the editor of Jewish Action, Dr. Bernard H. White of Dallas, Texas, responded to an editorial by Dr. Simcha Katz, in which the OU president recounted the story of a young man who, although the product of a prominent Jewish day school and high school system, confessed to feeling “ignorant [...]

It’s Lonely in the Middle

First Published Dec 4, 2006 I’ve long been taken with the following quote from Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik: “All extremism, fanaticism, and obscurantism come from a lack of security. A person who is secure cannot be an extremist.” Perhaps the quote has stuck so firmly in my mind because of the context in which I [...]

The Illusion of Freedom

After generations of slavery and oppression, amidst miracles unprecedented and unrepeated, the Children of Israel marched forth out of Egypt and into the wilderness as a free people for the first time in their collective memory. Fifty days later they stood together at Sinai to receive the Torah — the code of 613 commandments that [...]

Denouncing Spiritual Terrorism

On March 16, 1968, soldiers of the 1st Battalion’s Charlie Company committed one of the most notorious war crimes in American history when they brutally massacred over 300 villagers in the Vietnamese hamlet of Mỹ Lai. Was every soldier in the American army complicit in the crime? Did the perpetrators of the massacre act in [...]

The Candles and the Tree

It was the December after my ninth birthday. A menorah rested on the bookshelf over the television console. Across the room, beside the fireplace, the lights of a tree twinkled red and green and blue. I was standing next to my mother as she held a candle in her hand. My father wasn’t there. He [...]

Torah Study and Worldly Occupation

This week 2 is the third cycle of Pirkei Avos. In the second mishna of the third perek it says: Rabban Gamliel the son of Rabbi Yehuda the Prince said, Torah study is good with a worldly occupation, because the exertion put into both of them makes one forget sin. All Torah without work will [...]

Wake Up and Smell the Bacon

It was my first visit back to my parents’ house since I became frum. Over a year had passed, a year without the king-size bed in their guest room, without central heating, without 24/7 access to a fully stocked fridge and cupboard. My mother had, most graciously, stocked up on every kind of O-U foodstuff [...]

Inside/ Outside

Boarding the plane for my 6:00 AM flight from LaGuardia, bleary-eyed from too little sleep, I forced myself to offer a moderately enthusiastic good morning to the smiling steward as I crossed over the jet way and through the hatch. The steward echoed my greeting, then added, “You look very sharp today.” I felt my [...]

Mind Your Step

Looking on the bright side, I’m fortunate to have made through nearly half a century of life without breaking a bone. I’m fortunate to be in good enough physical condition to hold my own on the racquetball court, even if don’t usually win. I’m fortunate that it wasn’t my left ankle, so I can drive [...]

A Tale of Two Michaels

As music icon Michael Jackson was planning his return to the stage, basketball icon Michael Jordan was appearing in a less familiar arena. At the Golf Digest U.S. Open Challenge, Mr. Jordan shot an 86 — not bad, but a little off his game. His foursome included Justin Timberlake, Ben Roethlisberger, and Larry Giebelhausen, a [...]

E Unibus Plurum

The casual observer of the current presidential polling data requires little expertise to identify a trend stretching back over the last two presidential elections. The population of the United States has been, and continues to be, split almost 50-50 in their support for a national leader. At the same time, however, the division of country [...]

Parshas Bo — The Crossroads of Repentance

During the last days of prophetic vision, some 25 hundred years ago, the sages divided the Torah into parshios – portions, and decreed that successive parshios should be read publicly as part of the Sabbath morning prayer service, so that the Jewish people would hear the reading of the entire Torah from year to year. [...]

Der Meistersingers of Athens

Maybe it’s because I grew up listening to Xmas carols. Maybe it’s because what passes for Jewish music these days is frequently Jewish words grafted onto pop or rock instrumentals. Or maybe it’s because the perpetually waning enthusiasm I see in our young people today might be stemmed if we helped them tap into their [...]

Parshas Vayeitzei — Bringing the Well into the City

And [Yaakov] saw that there was a well in the field. Three flocks of sheep were there lying beside it, since it was from this well that the flocks were watered, and a great stone [blocked] the mouth of the well (Bereishis 29:2). This is how the Torah describes Yaakov’s arrival at the house of [...]

Laying the Foundations of the Future

As a high school rebbe, I often find comfort in the following midrash: On one occasion, Rabbi Akiva looked up from his lesson to discover his students dozing. (If even Rabbi Akiva couldn’t always keep his students engaged, who I am to think I can?) Rabbi Akiva employed a curious solution. “In what merit did [...]

The Sukkah of the World

By Rabbi Yonason Goldson Torah Ideals – Seeking Direction in a Misdirected Worlds A famous story, probably apocryphal but possibly true, recounts the origins of a shul in Poland named for its founder, Reb Itzele of Cracow. Reb Itzele was a poor peasant who dreamed recurrently of a great fortune that lay buried beneath a [...]

Offering Up Our Egos on the Altar of Elul

I was recently reminded of an incident that happened nearly 20 years ago. In the English-speaking beis midrash where I learned, smoking was strictly forbidden. The Israelis who davened with us respected the rule even with, according to their cultural predisposition, they couldn’t quite understand it. On one occasion, a young Israeli new the community [...]

Spice of Life

Salty. Bitter. Sweet. Sour. These are the tastes traditionally understood to describe the flavor receptors of the tongue and, consequently, the available range of culinary experience. However, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, there is one more. The fifth taste. Umami. Even if the name is strange, the savory character of [...]

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