Marrying a man born and raised in the British Empire, who speaks the “authentic” English, expanded my vocabulary. While some words, like queue, made it into my daily speech, others, like bonnet for the hood of the car, never did. But there is one British word that I have gladly adopted, and think is much...
“All you need is love,” sang the Beatles in 1967. A pretty sentiment to be sure, but a poor roadmap for life as proven by the young and confused of that generation whose lives were shaped by a fateful summer of love two years later. Love is wonderful, but alone it is hardly adequate. One...
I am a Christian who follows the Torah and I am a married mother of 7 school-aged children. My question to you is about my primary focus in life – family. My father’s side of the family has spiritually dark people. I have an aunt who is a psychic medium, who has passed along “prophecies”...
Does misery make strange bedfellows or is it politics that do so? In Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,” makes its appearance in a very literal way as the king’s jester crawls under a cloak and finds himself with an unusual bedmate. In 1850, an American essayist massaged those words...
Hello Rabbi Lapin, I’ve enjoyed your podcasts and have listened to each one (just to make sure you haven’t already answered this question on one of them). Another host I listen to prompted this question. He has mentioned several times the idea that as a nation, we atoned for slavery with the blood spilt by...
Psychological theories come and go. Sometimes, bogus ideas take hold and do damage as they embed themselves in society, while authentic ideas can lose popularity as they are not cutting-edge and exciting. I do not know if Erik Erikson’s stages of psycho-social development are in vogue now, but his views were what I remember from...
If you find yourself suffering from muscle cramps and unusual tiredness, you may have a potassium deficiency, but a doctor would need to determine this with blood tests. It is possible that you have not eaten enough potassium, but your symptoms may well have other causes. Nothing in our bodies tells us that it’s time...
I am a classical musician, who is highly trained as a violinist, and I run a music school for children. I see music as a spiritual language that unites people. Unfortunately, classical music is not appreciated, and nor is it understood by many people. It is often viewed as elitist and out of touch. What...
One of my enduring childhood memories is when I once suggested to a store owner that he had given me the wrong change. I must have been about eight years old, and the change included a Kennedy half-dollar, which I mistook for a quarter. The owner, with a touch of irritation, explained to me that...
I am a Jewish, modern orthodox, homeschooling mother of five who recently had the opportunity to take my kids on a tour of an American military base. Our tour guide was my cousin – a biological male who started hormone therapy in his late twenties and is now living as a woman. This was the...
