Things I have learned in the past week. 1) Disappointment hits hard. I am sad that my son and daughter will have a different future than the one I envisioned. I had wanted them to have a childhood in which a woman was a president. I didn't get what I wanted. I...

I'm sitting in my garage. I'm shaken. Anti-Semitic and racist hate was written on the driveway outside my garage door this morning. Its 3 1/2 hours later. The enormity of what I have seen is catching up to me. I'm sitting on a stool. Typing out this message on my...

#wisdom_biscuit: You deserve to be less scared.  Scary, not scared. And certain uncertainty. We live in a scary time. Of course it is scary. This is an election year, and the leadership of the most powerful country in the world is about to change. We are going from...

Dealing with 💩. How to better tolerate life How to deal with bull, crap, bunk, drivel, gibberish, guff, hogwash, nonsense, rubbish, baloney, bosh, bunkum, flim-flam, hokum, hooey, malarkey, moonshine, phooey, and poppycock. In our lives, we must tolerate and accept a...

Justified Anxiety “I moved to New York City for my health. I’m paranoid, and New York is the only place where my fears are justified.” — Anita Wise Until September 2015, I had a classroom to set up and run. Students coming and going, names to learn, procedures to...

Love L-O-V-E in four parts My best friend, Dr. Larry Keene, is a retired sociology professor and minister. We have performed countless weddings together. And, often, he gives a homily during the ceremony about the four components of love. Larry told me that he learned...

One night last winter, my wife and I put our then five-year-old daughter, Annie, to bed. We followed our typical bedtime routine, but unlike other nights, she was a bit upset when we left the room. We tagged teamed, going back in a few minutes later. Usually, after...

A stereotype is a thought that may be adopted by a specific type of individual but that belief may or may not accurately reflect reality. Examples of stereotypes are Cheap Jews Jewish grandmothers Jewish mothers Police at donut shops The word stereotype comes from the...

Innocents massacred in Paris. Black lives trivialized. Gun shootings. Undesired refugees drowned. Reactions to recent, horrifying current events run the gamut of negative emotions. Sadness, anger, and blame surface as do ridiculously simple explanations and...

Believe in Dog! This is the story I shared at the start of the High Holy Day service I ran. It is based on a joke that appeared in Field and Stream magazine and is also in a book by Anthony De Mello. A man trained his dog to fetch and retrieve almost anything. They...

Turning anxiety into excitement. Part two. I recently wrote an article recently about how we can turn anxiety into excitement. In summary: Physiologically, anxiety and excitement physiologically are quite similar (sped-up heartbeat, shallow breathing, sweating), but...

Bonus Issue I want to share a celebration! The meaningful Bar Mitzvah service I ran for James Franco got a glowing write up in the Jewish Journal. This experience got me thinking about a lot of things. (One of which is that I have been thinking about celebrity and how...

Here is video that my uncle Ira took in 1982. It's nothing you need to see. It shows me eating lunch with my cousin Josh. My sister and cousin Leslie are in the video. As are my father, mother, and Aunt Linda. https://youtu.be/Y7l-aACIIwY I don't remember any of this....