These days, it’s easy to completely melt into a puddle of doom and fear when scrolling through the news or the ignorant, malignant Instagram comments of so many. This morning, it was reported that Bolivia cut ties with Israel and Chile and Colombia recalled their ambassadors. There are death threats to Jews on college campuses, […]

On Tuesday afternoon, I thought my neighbor was making a bbq and that it was about to rain. Neither of those things turned out to be true. Instead, the “bbq” and gloomy sky were a result of wildfires in Canada. This phenomenon is affecting 90 million Americans at the moment. I have a weird confession […]

Several times each day, we describe God in our prayers as a shome’a tefila, One who hears prayers. “Hear our voice, Hashem, our God…accept our prayers with compassion…don’t turn us away empty…Blessed are You, Hashem, Who hears prayer.”  This blessing of the Amidah prayer paints a nice, neat picture of the relationship between our prayers […]

The table used by the heroic Hasid Joseph Gluck last Chanukah, to stop a horrific stabbing attack that wounded five and killed one, was remade into a dreidel-shaped menorah stand to commemorate the miracle of many more lives being saved. Gluck, who was presented with the New York State Senate Liberty Medal soon after, famously […]

What’s the purpose of a miracle? There are of course many answers, including those that are specific to the particular miracle in question. For instance, I recently learned how Abarbanel (15th-century Portuguese commentator) explains the purpose of one particular miraculous moment in the Book of Judges. In Judges Chapter 13, a malach appears to the […]

My fourth child was born 6 weeks early, but otherwise healthy. Or so we thought. In the moments after delivery, the OBGYN and neonatologist exclaimed over the baby’s umbilical cord. Part of it was a normal tube, but part of it looked like a thick, flat pancake. “Is that a problem?” I asked. “Doesn’t seem […]