“Should I take down my mezuzah?” A friend asked me the other day. I shuddered at the thought. The idea of hiding my Judaism by removing such a fixed item on my home, one that ironically is there to protect that home, was a level I just couldn’t imagine getting to — that I didn’t […]

Hi JITC- What is the point of inviting these guests to our sukkah? Thanks, Max Dear Max- Thanks for your question. I see from the subject line of your message that “these guests” refers not to your corporeal yom tov guests but to the Ushpizin. “Ushpizin” is an Aramaic word that means guests. Aramaic is […]

I watch her in awe – the way a sports fan might watch a great athlete – but the thing that this woman has mastered is herself. Every time I’ve been a guest in this friend’s home over the last fifteen years, I am blown away by what a person looks like when she truly […]

I’m not the best faster, which means I’m usually not the best at Yom Kippur prayers. But I did notice two things this Yom Kippur, once while I was praying and the other time while I was not praying. In Avinu Malkeinu, the customary prayer we say over and over again during the High Holidays, […]

50 years ago, On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack against Israel on Yom Kippur, a.k.a the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.  In the Golan Heights, about 180 Israeli tanks went against 1,400 from Syria. Along the Suez Canal, fewer than 500 Israeli defenders with only three tanks were […]

Seinfeld has a joke that more people are afraid of public speaking than death. That means that more people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy. Not me. I was a natural born performer. Was it in my genes? Did my middle-child birth order push me to be louder in order to […]