This Shabbos, the one preceding Tisha b’Av, is known as “Shabbos Chazon” – the Shabbos of the vision. Whose vision? The prophet Isaiah, who saw the destruction that would befall the Jewish people because of the way we baselessly hated one another. The great Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev would say: On the Shabbos of […]

Every Rosh Hashana we say the prayer Unsaneh Tokef : “On Rosh Hashanah we’ll be inscribed and on Yom Kippur we’ll be sealed – how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die; who will die at his predestined time and who before his time; […]

This week I let my eldest child (my super responsible ten year old daughter) use a sharp knife for the first time. A couple days later, I let her take something out of a hot oven. But the real craziness began a week ago when I let my daughter walk to a playground – which […]

Almost exactly five years ago to the day, my parents got a call that all people dread: their home (the one of my childhood) was up in flames. Fortunately, no one was in it at the time of the fire, and the major damage was confined to the back of the house. But still, it came out […]

There have been a few people who have hurt me pretty badly this past year; more this year than other years, actually. Jew in the City’s profile has risen over these last many months, and I think, or maybe I fear, that that thing they say, that “it’s lonely at the top,” is truer than […]