I’m pretty sure that there’s a place in hell where the really bad people are trapped in a shoe store with hordes of short people who whine “Mommy” at them – forever. There is a certain dread that fills my being at the end of every summer as we begin our back to school shopping. The […]
There’s a little game I’ve been playing with my children since they were old enough to speak. It’s a way to build up their self-esteem while simultaneously teaching them where we derive self-worth from in Judaism. This is how it goes: Me: Who made you so smart? My kid: Hashem (which literally means the name, but […]
Why do Orthodox Jews have so many kids? Is birth control ever allowed? Watch this video to find out.
This Sunday begins the joyful minor holiday of Tu b’Av, the fifteenth of the month of Av. The Talmud says besides Yom Kippur, there was no other holy day as happy for the Jews as Tu b’Av. In the times of the Temple, unmarried Jewish women would dress in white and dance in the vineyards, […]
Tisha B’Av – the ninth day of the month of Av – is usually the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, a day of fasting and mourning the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem, among other tragedies. But last year, our family’s Tisha B’Av was far from solemn. Late in June, my husband, Daniel, received […]
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 […]
