“I had to let three of my people go last week,” she told me, “and you have no idea how miserable I have been. I wish I could get toughened up so I could do whatever is necessary without feeling such pain!” “No, you don’t,” I replied. “In these frightening financial conditions, you may have...
All sorts of schools ranging from elementary to graduate level are abolishing grades or objective entrance exams such as the SATs. It is not a coincidence that this is happening as less learning and less transmission of verifiable skills take place. Numbers have a funny way of revealing reality. Just as most speedy drivers would...
My wife is taking inordinate pleasure upon reading that after having three children, the famous home tidy-up-er, Marie Kondo is acknowledging that tidying up is not the most important thing in life. Nonetheless, no matter what the living room or children’s bedrooms look like, unless you have been a Kondo acolyte, I know a truth...
A Purim Lesson The past few decades have seen a huge push to promote the presence of women in the workplace. California even mandated that all companies in the state must have women sitting on their boards of directors. It is a fact of modern life that men and women interact all the time in...
Are you afraid? Maybe you fear inflation eating away at your savings. Perhaps you see evil ideologies racing to entrap the families you love and the children you are raising. Rising rates of random violence in the streets might have you nervous about going out. Maybe, just maybe, there is a silver lining. Ancient Jewish...
Professor Raymond Dart was a famous anthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. On the first day of the school year, in the manner of teachers everywhere, he opened his Introduction to Anthropology course with a lecture. However, a bit into his talk, he braced his hands on the lectern and, tucking...
Are you planning a trip to a foreign country, perhaps one whose language you don’t speak? There are many language programs available and one popular method they use is to group vocabulary words by categories. It is all well and good to learn how to parse grammar correctly but if you are looking to get...
One of the ways we sometimes subconsciously telegraph the nature of our character to others is by how often we employ the first person singular pronoun, I or me, whilst talking. There are pundits who rigorously count the number of first person singular pronouns in presidential speeches and correctly interpret a high count as a...
My wife and I have just returned from an amazing visit to Israel. One feature of the population stuck out, delighting us both. While Israel has many unique facets, in one way we felt that we had stepped into a time warp, beaming us back to healthier days in the United States. Regardless of actual...
Solomon & Socrates It would be difficult to overstate the reverence with which Jews who try to be faithful to the Bible’s teachings treat a Torah scroll. It is hand-written in carefully scripted Hebrew, on meticulously stitched together parchment sheets, by an expert known as a ‘sofer’. A Torah scroll is treated with the tender...
